Expository Writing #3:
Broken Heart Essay

The following is an analysis of “The Broken Heart” by John Donne.  This essay is a response to an actual AP prompt and was part of the first semester final.  This essay was written under an intense pressure; as it turned out, if I had gotten even one less point on the final, I would have had a B.  Anyway, here it is:

THE BROKEN HEART.

by John Donne

He is stark mad, whoever says,
  That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
  But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
  Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
  I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

 Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
  If once into love's hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
  To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
  By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;
  He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry. 

If 'twere not so, what did become
  Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
  But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
  More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
  At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
  Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
  Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
  My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
  But after one such love, can love no more.

In “The Broken Heart,” the author uses various images characterizing destruction and wounds to reveal his attitude toward love as destructive.  The author personifies love as a vengeful being that likes to destroy hearts.  The heart, on the contrary, is viewed as frail, and apt to be destroyed.  In contrasting love and heart and exploring their relationship, the author reminisces about his debilitating experience with love and muses about its great powers.

The author uses many powerful images of love as an unkind, tyrannical being.  He characterizes love as “devouring” the heart and as a “plague” in the first stanza.  Moreover, he uses fire imagery, stating that he “saw a flask of powder burn a day.”  In the second stanza, love is purported to “swallow” men and through love, “whole ranks do die.”  Interestingly, love is characterized as a weapon, a cannonball, and a predator, a pike that preys on hearts.  He extends this personification of love as inflicting physical damage, stating that love delivers blows to hearts.

In contrast to love’s characterization as strong and destructive, the author uses many frail images to describe the heart.  The heart is a “trifle” when confronted by love.  In the weapon-victim analogy, the heart is invariably the victim, the ranks that are killed by the cannon ball and the fry that are devoured.  Moreover, the heart is the fragile glass that is broken by love.  At the end, the author’s heart is “rags of heart.”

In these images, the author not only shows that the love, the strong aggressor, victimizes the fragile heart, but also that the heart’s wounds from love are permanent and irreparable.  Both the burning and devouring images show this permanence.  Of course, the death images of the second stanza show this as well.  And the glass imagery shows the best, showing that broken glass can no more be repaired than reflect the true image.  And the “heart… can love no more.”

Thus, in “The Broken Heart”, the images show the harming legacy of love on the author’s heart.  Moreover, this effect is shown to be permanent.