Rio Guzman's Journal

Everything is interconnected!

“No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”–John Donne

“As a product of the Renaissance, Donne was filled with certain ideals and the passage he wrote in “Meditation XVII” reflects this. He believed that all people were connected by community bonds as well as spiritual bonds. Every event in the life of one man had some influence on the life of all others. The very influence Donne had on authors that came after him is some evidence of the truth of his axiom”.

“When Donne writes of the tolling bell, he is, of course, speaking of the funeral bell. It was traditionally rung three times for a man and two times for a woman followed by a pause and then a toll for every year of age for the deceased. It is a solemn sounding bell as can easily be discerned from the descriptive poetry of Poe’s”

“Ultimately, the point of Donne’s “Meditation XVII” is more uplifting. Even though we all die a bit when someone else dies, the interconnectedness of humanity means that some part of us lives on even after we die”.

Excerpts from: For Whom the Bell Tolls

By W.J. Rayment

We are parts of the Whole. Our ‘individuality’ is just a projection, an interpretation.

Filed under: Perspective | Tagged: everything is interconnected, For whom the bell tolls, John Donne, rio guzman, W.J. Rayment | Comments Off on For Whom the Bell Tolls | John Donne | W.J. Rayment