S2 4.03 Graded Assignment Literature

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LOVE AT ITS CORE
Sonnet 116 of William Shakespeare is one of his sonnets that establishes the central theme of most of Shakespeare’s sonnets. While the entire sequence of Shakespeare’s sonnets each has their place within the Shakespearean collection, sonnet 116 is one that is very well known and memorized. The reason why this particular sonnet is categorized as a poetic canon is that of its central theme of love and the establishment of undying passion.
In its fundamental meaning, the sonnet is about love and how it becomes immortal, which is by staying the same, by standing the test of time and overcoming death and by accepting no fault. In the sonnet Shakespeare defines love’s immortality by saying, “Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove” CITATION Sha01 p 116 l 1055 (Shakespeare 116) To simplify Shakespeare’s words, the poet says that love exists when it does not change and remains to be love when no one attempts to change; otherwise it is not true love at its core. The poet moves on to talk about the true love and says that if love was something that was temporary and changing over time, then no man ever experienced love. The passion that love brings is everlasting, according to the poem. This passion is also a star that leads the lover to immortality and is never shaken, thus establishing the permanency of love, by saying that “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

” CITATION Sha01 p 116 l 1055 (Shakespeare 116)What makes this sonnet special is the emotional depth and the tense language that the poet uses to portray the theme of passion and the power of love that outlasts time. Even though the poet uses negative connotations, the feeling of the poem is about a positive emotion- love and its eternal nature. This makes the poem sympathetic in its sense even though the language creates and anti-sympathetic picture in the mind of the reader. In the end, the poet asks the reader: Have you ever loved someone eternally?

Work Cited
Shakespeare. “Sonnet 116.” Shakespeare’s Sonnets. DjVu Edition Books, 2001. Poem.