In this close reading, I will analyze “The Flea” by John Donne. “The Flea” is a love sonnet that uses a flea as the reason for the writer and the woman to get together. The poem rhythmically switches between iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter, ending with two pentameter lines at the end of each stanza. Each stanza consists of nine lines. The rhyme scheme consists of rhyming couplets, AABBCCDDD. In the first stanza, Donne uses extended metaphors to get his point across on the flea. The first stanza tells how the writer and the woman become one after being bitten by the flea. This stanza begins with “Mark but this flea, and mark this,” punish the flea and punish only the flea. “How little you refuse me”, she denies his sexual advances which mean little to her. "She sucked me first, and now she sucks you. And in this flea, our two bloods mixed", the flea bites them both, causing their blood to mix inside the flea . The mixing of blood cannot therefore be a sin, nor a shame, nor a loss of virginity; nor should there be any question of their other bodies mixing, “a sin, nor a shame, nor a loss of virginity”. incident of distressing affliction. “Woo” is a condition of misery and unhappiness, the flea’s “woo” can refer to the pain of being bitten by the flea. “And pampered, it swells with blood made of two,” the flea is lucky enough to be filled with her blood. This chip grows with the blood of the two subjects. The flea has already united them by mixing their blood, which is more than he asks of the woman: "And this, alas, is more than we would like... middle of paper.. ....f sex. The writer addresses the woman through rhetorical questions: "Your nail is purple, in the blood of innocence", has she sinned by shedding the blood of the innocent? Did she damn herself to hell by persecuting the flea? “In what way could this flea be guilty, if not in this drop that it sucked from you?” What could the flea have done so badly, other than sucking a small drop of blood from them? “Yet you triumph and you say that you no longer find yourself, or I, any weaker now.” The woman retaliates: celebrating her success by killing the flea makes neither him nor she any less noble. The writer responds: “It is true, so learn how false the fears are; » is true, and learn how wrong your fears are. The writer ends with: “So much honor, when you hand it over to me, will be wasted, because the death of this flea has taken your life. When she surrenders to him, she won't lose anything