The Bait

Thoughts on "The Bait"


In the poem The Bait by John Donne he describes the good and the bad thing about love. He tries to portray what love really is. To achieve this he changes his diction from that of a loving and caring tone to that of an alarming tone. He also uses word choice to do this.

In the first half of the poem the speaker talks about the good things about love. Donne uses the metaphor of bait to represent love. Just as fishes are drawn to bait the bait says that people are drawn to love as if it is something enjoyable. Donne uses words such as golden, crystal, pleasures, enarmour’d and amorously.

In the second half of the poem Donne switches the diction and starts using alarming and upsetting words such as freeze, cut treacherously and strangling and snare. He does this to emphasize the change that can happen with after you are in love.

In conclusion the speaker then says that those who don’t fall in love are smarter than he was. He says this because those who avoid love or prefer not to fall for loves bait are smart because they will not be hurt by love’s deceit.