Ms. Peifer
English 10 IB, Hr 4
February 23, 2009
Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
Shakespeare's purpose in Sonnet 116 is to show the reader the glory and the strength of love. He achieves this through his use of metaphors, personification, and the theme.
Shakespeare uses metaphors to say love is "an ever-fixed mark/ That looks on tempests and is never shaken" (5-6) and "the star to every wandering bark" (7). These metaphors portray love as a unwavering guide that is always looking out for people. This makes love seem like a very strong thing since it is there to support you no matter what happens.
Also present in this sonnet is personification. Shakespeare personifies time and love saying "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/ Within his bending sickle's compass come" (9-10). This is saying that even though time has the power to make a person's rosy lips and cheeks go away, time cannot control love. This is turn shows how great love is that it es able to resist another very strong power.
The theme of this sonnet is love and Shakespeare is trying to portray the greatness of it to the reader. He does this by saying, "Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds,/ Or bends with the remember to remove" (2-4). This quote states that love isn't really love if it disappears or changes when the one who is loved does. He is saying how potent it is that changes such as these are insignificant and unimportant, and then reinstates that point by saying that it "bears it out even to the edge of doom" (12). Shakespeare's certainty of this is evident in the couplet at the end of the sonnet which says, "If this be error and upon me proved,/ I never writ, nor no man ever loved" (13-14). This ending to the sonnet shows how powerful love is because Shakespeare says that if someone proves this definition of love wrong than nobody has ever really loved because this is truly what love is, an unbelievable strong and glorious thing.
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