Critical Analysis of The Indifferent by John Donne Essay -- Indifferen

Critical Analysis of "The Indifferent" by John Donne "The Indifferent" by John Donne is a relatively simple love poem in comparison to his other, more complicated works. In this poem, "he presents a lover who regards constancy as a 'vice' and promiscuity as the path of virtue and good sense" (Hunt 3). Because of Donne's Christian background, this poem was obviously meant to be a comical look at values that were opposite the ones held by Christians. According to Clay Hunt, "['The Indifferent'] is probably quite an early poem because of the simplicity and obviousness of its literary methods, its untroubled gaiety, and its pose of libertinism, which all suggest that Donne wrote [the poem] when he was a young man about town in Elizabethan London" (1-2). The poem "mocks the Petrarchan doctrine of eternal faithfulness, putting in its place the anti-morality which argues that constancy is a 'heresy' and that 'Love's sweetest part' is 'variety'" (Cruttwell 153). The first two stanzas of the poem seem to be the speaker talking to an audience of people, w hile the last one looks back and refers to the first two stanzas as a "song." The audience to which this poem was intended is very important because it can drastically change the meaning of the poem, and has therefore been debated among the critics. While most critics believe that the audience changes from men, to women, then to a single woman, or something along those lines, Gregory Machacek believes that the audience remains throughout the poem as "two women who have discovered that they are both lovers of the speaker and have confronted him concerning his infidelity" (1). His strongest argument is that when the speaker says, "I can love her, and her, and you and you," he first points out two random nearby women for "her, and her", then at the two that he is talking to for "you and you."   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The first stanza begins rather simply. Donne starts every line with either "I can love" or "Her who." According to Hunt, the tone of the first stanza goes from "weary and patient entreaty" to "a climax of irritation at the end" (4) in the lines "I can love her, and her, and you and you / I can love any, so she be not true." The first eight lines simply list opposite character types, but the last two lines go to "her, and her, and you and you", then to any, "just before Donne springs the sho... ...hold.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This poem presents a speaker that holds morals opposite the ones accepted by the greater part of society. While this poem is not incredibly complicated, it is very interesting to see how Donne spends the first 25 lines of the poem building up a convincing argument, then completely rebutting it in the final two lines. He refers to promiscuity as a vice and constancy as a virtue, using many sexual references to help illustrate his points. Donne successfully creates a character in a simple love poem that believes that there is nothing more to love than lust, and then uses his point of view to portray a portrait of love that is completely opposite of what Donne wants the reader to get from the poem. Works Cited Cruttwell, Patrick. "John Donne." Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 24: 153. Hunt, Clay. Donne's Poetry: Essays in Literary Analysis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954. Machacek, Gregory. "Donne's The Indifferent." Explicator [CD-ROM] 53.4 (Summer 1995): p. 192, 3 p. Availible: Magazine Article Summaries Full Text Elite. Item Number: 951025812. McNees, Eleanor J. "John Donne." Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 24: 207.