random little things

No Man is an Island

Working with poetry and song lyrics

»        John Donne - No Man is an Island

»        Paul Simon -I am a Rock

»        Rogers and Hammerstein - You’ll Never Walk Alone

1) What do they say about our relationship with each other?

2) Write a brief comment on your blogs, describing the difference.

3) Which song did you like best and why?

The first thing we had to read today was “No Man is an Island” by John Donne (1572-1631).  This poetry is from the 17^th century, that’s why it was a bit challenging to understand the meaning behind it, but I have found out that the whole verse is a metaphor.  An island is isolated from the continent but it still belongs to it. Which in other words means that even if it seems like we don’t need each other, or like we are separated from each other, we don’t. We do need each other and none of us are entire of itself.

The next song was I am a rock by Paul Simon. This song is about a person who emotionally is a rock, someone without feelings. There are some great examples in the lyrics which show how this person tries to avoid all kind of emotions. “I’ve built walls” and “I have no need of friendship” are one of them. It seems like he doesn’t even want to hear the words “love” or “friends”, but actually, he WANTS friends and love. I think these lines “Friendship causes pain” and “If I never loved, I never would have cried” means that someone hurt him in the past that’s why he’s afraid of getting hurt again. The last two lines describes perfectly why he is a rock, “And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries”. So this song is the exact contrast of “No Man is an Island”, where Donne writes about that you can’t do anything alone.

The last song was “You’ll Never Walk Alone” – by Rodgers and Hammerstein. This song was originally written to a musical called Carousel.  You can hear it when the cousin of the main character tries to comfort Julie, after losing her husband.  I’m pretty sure there are different opinions about what does this song mean but now, I’m going to tell you my own opinion. I think the first few lines, are about holding on and not giving up even when “you’re walking through a storm”. Don’t give up because “at the end of the storm,There's a golden sky”. Which in other word means you’re going to get over it, and it’ll be okay til’ the end. No matter how hard it is now, you’ll never walk alone, there will always be someone beside you. I think the main message of this song is, that you should never give up because even when you feel really lonely, and you feel like you don’t have anyone, you will never be completely alone.

So these were the three different lyrics. I think all of them are amazing on their own way, but my favorite is “No Man is an Island.” I really like that first you don’t really understand what it tries to tell you, but after a few re-reading you’re like “wow”. I’m totally agree with John Donne, because my opinion is basically the same. People need each other, even though loads of us think that they’ll be okay alone. Nope, I don’t think so. “No man is an island, entire of itself”.