Journal #4

Title: Community
Author: John Donne
Style: Personal Response
S: Someone who is represents the voice of the community
O: To state responsibilities
A: The World
P: To present as alternative direction to life
S: Working to together to overcome obstacles
Tone: Direct and informative

Response:

In the poem “Community” by John Donne I can make connections to my daily life in the most interesting way. The poem’s message is hidden in the shallow walls of its structure; that is some what similar to how I write poems but author goes a step farther by adding end rhythms. The end rhythms causes me to fall off track a little while I read the poem, so I read it over and over again and each time I read it I felt like I was understanding the poem more and more. When I first read the poem it reminded of the bible because of the first two lines in the poem, “GOOD we must love, and must hate ill, For ill is ill, and good good still”. The way I try to look at life for the most part is by having a positive aspect on the way the environment I grew up in, seems to be much safer place to live than some of the other areas in the bay. I know a lot of violence occurs in the area of this 2.4 square mile city; the violence never impacts me in away to a point where I want to go out and start harming people. I found the more positive thoughts I conjure up, the more positive my day will end up going. In the first two lines of the second stanza, “If then at first wise Nature had Made women either good or bad, Then some wee might hate and some choose”. These lines are significant because as a child was to always taught to be good and most times punished for being bad. In the bible neither Adam nor Eve knew the difference between good and ill, until, the persuasiveness of the snake caused woman to fall from grace who slowly but surely took the first man with her. The message within the poem gives readers the chance to consider more than one origin for how life came to be and if the readers believe people were born good or ill. The poem just has many sections complex enough to keep readers drawing on many different views of life and I believe that is interesting because the ambiguousness of the poem caused me to make numerous connections that can or cannot be valid.