Dear students, please read this poem, which is an ancient one… it was published in England in 1624 by the greatest Metaphysical poet, John Donne.
Enjoy the poem and say: how can this little poem be modern, even nowadays? how can it connect to ” Spoon River Anthology”? Please post post your comments on the blog as an answer to my entry.
Thank you ! the teacher
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Spoon River 
Dear teacher,
I’ve found this poem very interesting and touching…I’ve never heard of John Donne, but he is a very fascinating poet!
I think this little poem can be considered as a modern one cause it treats issues that are still the same in our society.
Donne compares every man to ” a piece of the continent, a part of the main”, giving importance to the relationship between people, that is fundamental to life itself. And yet today, we tend to turn in on ourselves, to become a single island, even in our families…
We can also relate this poem to “Spoon River Anthology” because the “individualism” that pervaded Donne’s society and our, is the same that characterised Spoon River’s inhabitants. In fact, Spoon river was a village where people lived their lives concentrating only about their own needs and desires, often at the expense of the others. But this fake appearance, this hidden lives full of secrets led Spoon River’s dead to regret and frustration for their empty lives, with no morality.
Nowadays, this egoistic feelings will not gain us happyness, but only hatred and other troubles.
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Dear teacher,
In my opinion, this poem can actually be considered as a modern one thanks to its message. Nowadays, many people think that everything revolves around their own lives, but sometimes they forget that what happens to them could be due to other people’s actions.
For example, the concept of an egoistic life is quite present in several poems of “Spoon River Anthology”, and unfortunately, the concept is still alive today. It is important to understand, that nobody can be an individual with free will at all, because we are influenced by the society in which we live, from our birth to our death. As Donne says, we are just a part of the main. However, every part of the main is essential: we have to consider the importance of the individual, but this has to be related to the importance of the whole society. For example, if i want something to happen, I have to consider potential damages which can be associated with people who live around me.
With this poem, I think that the author aimed at alerting people who live unaware of what happens around the world, because if something concerns mankind, it concerns them too. As in Spoon River used to be, people who tried to hide aspects of their lives (we are speaking about a small village and not about a world, actually), had negative consequences to other people, especially their families, and this happens even nowadays. So, if something concerns you and your actions, it might concern me too: the importance of the relationships among people is the main theme of the poem, according to my interpretation.
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Dear teacher,
When I read this poem I was surprised by its contemporaneity and its simplicity.
I think that it can be considered as a modern poem because of the theme and the message.
Indeed the author wants to focus on “individualism” and “arrogance”. At the end of the poem he talks about the bells: <> to say that they ring for everyone and not only for ourselves, because we are part of a big whole;mankind.
The author makes reference to the bells and to the islands to talk about individualism and says that “no man is an island”, but in nowadays society men are not islands but real continents, because they live their life to pursuit their happiness.
We are living in a world where everyone looks after himself and lives his life unaware of the impacts of his actions, because we don’t even consider that every action could be the result of someone else’s action.
We have to change this situation to live better, that’s the message the author wants to spread .
In my opinion this poem can be connected to several poems of Spoon River Anthology, a collection of poems published in 1915, so we can see the contemporaneity of John Donne’s poem which has lasted since 1624 to 2015 and will last beyond.
For example we analysed Ace Shaw, a poem which talks about men who wants to earn money, and there is not difference between being a lawyer or a banker because we always talk about money. Here we see the arrogace and the induvidualism of men who doesn’t care of the poor because they are only interested in their health.
To sum up I think that even if the world turns and changes there are some typical human aspects that we will never change, and literature with its themes and messages is the proof.
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Dear teacher,
John Donne wrote the poem “No man is an island” in 1624: through this poem, the author treated a vey modern theme.
The meanging of this poem is that no man is alone: each human being is part of humanity and so no one can live completely isolated from the world around him. All men need each other because we’re all the same regardless race or money: this is the meaning of humanity.
This little poem can be connencted to many poems of Spoon River Anthology: a work of Masters Edgard Lee, published in 1915.
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Dear teacher,
this short poem can be easily related to the modernity because it concerns a theme which has always existed: the “individualism” or egoism.
We can understand it thanks to the verse “entire of itself”, but we have also to precize that the author criticizes this attitude: “No man is an island”, “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”.
I agree with Donne’s point of view because we are all a piece of the society, and every piece is fundamental in order to make it work.
We can say that the society is like a clock where every person is a gear, if we miss one piece indeed it will never work, so there has to be every single gear because everyone’s cooperation is indispensable to make it work: “Because I am involved in mankind”.
We can find many poems of Spoon River Anthology where people are criticised by E.L. Master for living an egoistic life without thinking of the others but always thinking of their own wealth.
Once they die, this way of living left regrets and discontent in men’s souls which were functional to the author to write their tombstones.
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Dear teacher,
In my view this poem is fantastic because of the semplicity in which is written and the important theme which is treated: ‘Individualism’.
In this poem we are compared to “a piece of the continent, part of the main”, because, especially nowadays, people always think of themselves, forgetting that we are part of a big mechanism where everyone is essential to the operation of this society and every actions is important for the improvement of life.
The same issue can be found in “Spoon River Anthology”, where Edgar Lee Masters tells stories of characters who live in a small town, which is apparently open and understanding , but actually it is full of secrets and hypocrites.
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Dear Teacher,
I Really enjoyed reading this poem for two main reasons: First of all because I found the choice of words very musical and smooth and at the same time I found the vocabulary simple and easily understandable. Second of all my attention got caught by the message and the themes of the poem, which by the way looked very actual to me.
I think Donne chose a really common issue in human nature, that will never really die, which is the wrong and sometimes involuntary habit, of always putting ourselves and our needs first.
This problem is a very common flaw in human behavior, still nowadays, and that is why we can consider Donne’s poem very present-day.
Donne, however, instead of concentrating on individualism, tells us that nobody of us is “entire” by itself, we create something complete just when we stand all together.
We all count. Every single individual has a role in our society and in order to make it work, everybody has to to give his contribution.
This state of mind is exactly the contrary of some of the characters from Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology.
This egoism and individualism brings the citizens of Spoon River to unhappy endings. People from Spoon River discerned their needs even in spite of their neighbors. This behavior is as horrible as it is self-distructive.
We think this kind of attitude will bring us satisfaction and happines, but in death it just leaves us with an emptyness feeling of regret and repentance. Helping each other is the way to happines, even when you have nothing, the best way to feel happy is help somebody, because improving somebody’s life is the best gift we can do to ourselves
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We could start by saying that poetry never truly gets old. As experienced with Masters’s anthology, some not – too – modern literary works can still manage to convey a meaningful message despite the passying of time. John Donne’s ‘No Man is an Island’ can be considered an immortal piece of art, given that it explores topics transcending both time and space.
As a matter of fact, Donne’s poem discusses deep philosophical and ethical themes, such as the natural correspondence between a part and its whole. In this case, the late Metaphysical poet focused on the relationship between individuals and mankind. According to Donne, no man can possibly think of himself as an independent and isolated individual. Every small part, which the author identifies as an ‘island’, becomes essential to the whole and its correct functioning. At the same time, society wouldn’t be able to exist without its component parts.
That’s why we could consider Donne’s sermon as an effective hymn to mutual cooperation, which perfectly manages to highlight the faults of blind individualism. As to that, readers get to understand that leading a selfish and at the same time self – absorbed existence feels almost unnatural and irrational.
‘No Man is an Island’ became a referential poem for many generations of artists and intellectuals, given its modernity and its continuous connection with the society we live in.
Although ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ made its first appearance in Donne’s poem, it soon became a worldwide known verse when used by American author Ernest Hemingway as a title for one of his most notable novels. Similarly, hard rock band Metallica produced a record called ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ in the last decades of the 20th century, proving once again the huge impact that both Donne’s and Hemingway’s compositions had on a wider audience.
Besides, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ can be considered the ultimate connection between single individuals, who are expected to feel every person’s death as a loss to all mankind. Edgar Lee Masters’s collection of what we could define as biographical epitaphs gave a substantial contribution to Donne’s honorable principle, by creating a dead world which resembles our own corrupted reality. Actually, Masters’s dead villagers are meant to embody a wide range of human vices and virtues, leading readers to an almost immediate and natural identification with the characters’ stories and features. And as to that, we could almost assume that readers might eventually understand the true meaning of Donne’s last two gloomy verses, thanks to Masters’s ingenious expedient.
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Dear teacher,
In my opinion this poem, written by John Donne in 1624, is of absolute interest for the moment we are living.
The world is getting more and more open, everything seems possible and near, but individualism and egoism increasingly dominate.
People think that they can have and do it all, but what dominates is loneliness, detachment, the belief of being individuals disconnected from the rest of the world, even if not really.
We are not aware of being the cause of what happens, for better or worse.
We are like a tiny piece of a puzzle and without every piece the work cannot be complete.
For example Donne in the last two lines talks about “bells”. He says “it tolls for thee”. From my point of view the sound of the bell reminds us that we are part of a community.
Every gesture, every action that we perform, it has a reflection not only on ourselves but also on others.
We can connect this poem to “Spoon River Anthology “.
This book, consisting of a collection of epithaps, describes the life of some characters who focused only on their own needs, or better their welfare.
In conclusion, I think that this poem can be considered as a modern poem, because the connection to the actuality is the forgetfulness of our sense of community.
The recall of the sound of the bell is an imperative to understand that we do not live alone.
It is a call for participation in a world that is increasigly open and without any borders.
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Dear Gloria, Martina, Anna, Alvise, Giulia, Marco, Sara, Anna P, Giacomo , welcome to the beauty of poetry!
Thank you for linking the past and the present and for finding relevant meanings in these powerful lines.
Most of all, thank you for sharing
ET
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