"Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud" by John Donne Reflection

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

This poem caught my attention because of the title. I knew from the title that it will be about death and I thought it would be trying to belittle death, or make it seem not as grand or important. The speaker of the poem made death seem like a thing that isn't so grand or terrifying. The speaker told us that death is just another kind of sleep; we awaken eternally or go to the afterlife. The narrator is telling us that death isn't even a real thing. They tell us that "we wake eternally/And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die." They are talking directly to "Death" here and they're saying that death won't exist anymore because no one really dies. This opens up a lot of philosophical dilemmas, but I don't think that is the attitude of the narrator. I think that the narrator is trying to make death seem as not a scary thing to fear it less. I think that the narrator is terrified of death and dying, so they're trying to convince themselves that death isn't so scary after all, since they won't really die. They'll just go to the afterlife and death would feel like a short sleep just like everyday. By making death seem like something that happens everyday or something that the narrator has already experienced, the fear lessens, because it is something known. Death is a big unknown and people deeply fear the unknown, so by making death into something common and familiar, it becomes something less feared.