In Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker effectively argues that his “mistress” should consider giving up her virginity due to imminent death. His argument is based upon his effective use of logic, the emotions that his words evoke, and his strong display of his love for her. His purpose for writing this poem was to get his mistress to sleep with him. His purpose of telling her about imminent death is what really persuaded her. The audience would be very fearful if these things were happening to them. He successfully persuades her with facts of both good and bad.
The appeal to ethics in this his credibility for how he loves her. He strongly displays this love throughout the poem. He displays this love by telling her how long that her one adores every part of her. That he wishes that they had forever so he could admire her more. The ethics in this poem wouldn’t go with what we are taught today. He tells her about how much he adores every part he especially talks about her breasts. He tells her that he would spend two hundred year admiring each of them. That he would spend thirty thousand to the rest of her beautiful body.
His emotional appeal for this poem would be all the lust he shows. He shows emotion by talking about her beauty throughout the entire poem. Which comes back to him wishing they could be together forever so he could adore every part of her. But his emotional appeals where mostly about his love for her. He shows her something to fear about dying a virgin. The fear he shows her is when he talks about the worms taking away her virginity He tells how her honor will be turned to dust by the worms. He tells her that his love for her will never die. He explains that he would just love her at a lower rate.
The logic that he puts into this poem is that fear of death. The fear of death that tells her about the worms crawling inside of her. He tells her that during death all these horrible things about how she will lose her virginity. The facts about her dying a virgin is what he uses to persuade her. He explains about her honor being turned to dust and how she lose her virginity anyway. She will lose it either by a man or a worm. He tells her that his lust will be turned to ashes and that her virginity to dust when they die.
He writes a pretty persuasive poem to his mistress. Any girl would be stupid to let her virginity go to the worms instead of a guy that loved her as much as he had said. The love of a man would do her honor good if he had loved her as much as he expressed throughout this poem. He tells her about all his pent up lust for her. He suggests that they just get rid of their pent up sexual frustrations and just go ahead and make love. He tells her I’ve told you everything about what will happen when we die, so let’s just have sex while we are still young and able to.
He tells her how they can’t stop time, they can just change with it so death is inevitable. He tells her that just because they have sex the world won’t end or the sun won’t stop shining brightly in the sky. He tells her how much better she would fell if he took it instead letting the worms do it while she’s dead. His overall purpose is to persuade her into letting him take her virginity.
He mostly tries to persuade her to this by scaring her with the facts of imminent death. By telling her how much better it would feel to release her sexual frustrations by doing this thing with him. Most girls are taught through Christ which tells them to wait until they are married to give away their virginity. If any girl these days would have read this from a nameless admirer they would take the guy straight to the police for a sexual thing.
He tells her about his love and lust for her body. He tells her about how they will both perish from this planet to be buried in the ground. He mostly persuades her to giving it to him because of imminent death and that he lusts after her. Most guys wouldn’t even use a poem to explain their love to a mistress or a lady that they love. They would send some text that would be directly to the point instead of something that devotes love to their lady.
He evokes her feelings of being loved and lusted after. He tells her things that would make any mistress or lady want to sleep with him for the fear of death. He successfully reaches his goal you would believe because any girl would feel loved and fear dying a virgin. He is successful just because he lays out the logical examples of why she should she with him.
In the end, he calms down a little by giving her a little hope about the situation. He tells her if they had sex that they would pursue time instead of time pursing them. The speaker is a bit confusing about how he describes the ideas about sex and time. Even if it was one of us writing this it would still be a little confusing. Because we could confuse these two things too. “To His Coy Mistress” offers us a chance to understand Marvell’s confusing way of telling us about how he connects sex and time together. Citations
Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” Online.