Life leads us to excessive wishes that often result in a man’s downfall.
Sir Philip Sidney in “Thou Blind Man’s Mark” portrays his hypocrisy towards desire and shows how it influenced to their downfall and destruction. In his sonnet, Sidney uses metaphor, alliteration and repetition to convey his feelings for desire.Throughout “Thou Blind Man’s Mark” Sidney uses metaphors that clearly illustrates the effects of desire on ones life. He begins with the metaphor of desire as a “blind man’s mark“, the title of the poem that shows desire is aimless. He then goes on to call desire “fools chosen snare” illustrating that desire is an act of foolishness, moreover he adds weight to his accusations by comparing desire to the “web of will” a difficulty brought by men upon themselves.
. The use of these metaphors allows the reader to understand his views that to desire could be counted as the biggest mistake of a person’s life.Sidney continues to convey his dislike of desire with the use of alliteration. The repetition of specific words emphasizes his negative thoughts on desire. For example he says “cradle of causeless care”.
This focuses on the idea that desire can cause one to care about someone for no real reason. He uses this technique again when he says, “with price of mangled mind”, a similar idea that while trying to accomplish a foolish task he yet didn’t achieve anything but still lost his sanity. Other example includes “fond fancy’s scum” where the poet compares desire to dirt, and illustrates that it is an addiction.Sidney also uses repetition to highlight his consistent encounters with desire.
His repetition of “too long!” shows his frustration with desire and the long term effects it has on him. It is clear that Sidney is unhappy with the way desire had effected his actions and decisions he has made in his life. He also repeats “in vain” that discusses the impact of desire on is life and how it influenced him to run after stupid things.Using metaphor, alliteration and repetition Sidney finally conclude his sonnet ironically by saying that he only desire to kill desire, by implication let reason rule over passion, showing a sense of final decision. This lead the reader to fully understand his feelings toward desire, an emotion that causes so much harm to people’s lives and clarifying that desire only leads to regret and unhappiness.
