SONNETS: ACHIEVED ESSAY
Describe at least ONE idea that was worth learning about in EACH text. Explain how the writer showed you this idea was worth learning about in EACH text.
An idea that was worth learning about in sonnets 18 and 116 by William Shakespeare, is the idea of love. Shakespeare made this idea worth learning about through his use of the sonnet as a poetic form.
In sonnet 18 Shakespeare tries to immortalise the beauty of his love by writing the sonnet about them. ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see / So long lives this and this gives life to thee.’ By writing about his love in the sonnet he has ensured that his love for that person will be preserved for as long as people can read. By doing so he has proven to his reader how strong love can be. This is an idea worth learning about.
Shakespeare used the sonnet as a poetic form to illustrate his feelings for his love. The iambic pentameter in the sonnet creates a rhythm similar to a heart beat. That rhythm draws attention to the effect his love has on his heart.
Sonnet 116 also teaches the reader about love. Shakespeare sets a benchmark for love by saying that it will endure any trouble. ‘It’s an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken.’In this line he compares love to a lighthouse that endures storms and remains standing. This idea was worth learning about as it makes the reader question the strength of their own love.
The sonnet’s structure is used to reinforce this idea of love. In the final rhyming couplet Shakespeare challenges his reader. ‘If this be error and upon me proved / I never writ, nor no man ever loved.’ He uses the final quatrain to drive home his message on love by putting his reputation as a writer on the line. He says that if he’s wrong, then everything that he has written is wrong, and that there’s no such thing as love.
In conclusion, love is an important idea that was worth learning about in sonnets 18 and 116. Shakespeare shows the reader this through his use of the sonnet as a poetic form.
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Describe at least ONE idea that was worth learning about in EACH text. Explain how the writer showed you this idea was worth learning about in EACH text.
Few people would say they’ve never loved, and yet, according to Shakespeare, few people in this world understand the true meaning of love. Through his use of metaphor in sonnet 116, personification in 18, and contrasting imagery in 29, Shakespeare is able to show to his reader what real love is; and for many, this is a lesson worth learning.
Shakespeare sets a bench mark for love in Sonnet 116. In very few words and by use of metaphor he is able to articulate the strength of real love. He calls it an ‘ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken’ and a ‘star to every wandering bark’. By using these metaphors he draws to the mind images of a lighthouse that illuminates the way through the most violent of storms, or a star that lost ships can navigate by in the darkest of moments. Shakespeare feels so strongly about his concept of true love that he lays his own reputation on the line in the final couplet when he says, ‘If this be error and upon me proved / I never writ, nor no man ever loved.’ He makes the reader consider their own definition of love by stating that if he is proved wrong in his notion, then everything he has written on love is false, but also, every love that has ever been is also false. It was this idea that was worth learning about.
Sonnet 18 reinforces Shakespeare’s notion of true love as the speaker tries to compare his love to a Summer’s day. As this comparison evolves, however, we soon learn that even the beauty of a summer’s day does not equal that of the speaker’s love. Personification is used to illustrate the faults of such a day. The ‘eye of heaven’ is often too hot, unlike his love, and ‘often is his gold complexion dimm’d’ unlike his love. Death too is personified, ‘Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,’ as Shakespeare has immortalised his love by capturing their beauty in this very sonnet. True love is a rare and beautiful thing, and something, in Shakespeare’s opinion, worth writing about so that his reader may learn what true love really is.
This idea is again clearly illustrated in sonnet 29 through the use of contrasting imagery. Unlike the other two sonnets, sonnet 29 begins with a despondent tone. The speaker is in despair with his fortune and fate, calls himself an ‘outcast’ and that in his current thoughts‘myself despising’. However, line 10 turns this image around when the speaker thinks on his love, ‘haply I think on thee.’ Suddenly that despondent tone and desperate imagery turns, and the speaker becomes like a bird singing ‘hymns at heaven’s gate.’ When he is in love, heaven welcomes him, where before heaven was ‘deaf’ to his ‘bootless cries.’ Shakespeare cleverly uses contrast of imagery to show how love, real, true love, can change you. In my opinion, this is an idea worth knowing.
Love is, therefore, the greatest thing, and while true love may not be easy to find, it is something sublime and transformational. Shakespeare, through his use of personification, metaphor and contrasting imagery, makes this one important idea worth knowing.
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