The Dewdrop Marvel Analysis

Marvell also utilizes personification by detailing the way the dewdrop “slight[s]” the flower on which it lies and rues its separation from the sky (9). To the way the dew beads on the petal, he lends emotion and motive: “careless of its mansion new,” the drop withdraws into itself, hoping to capture a part of the sky in its “little globe’s extent” (7). It passes its time unhappily with the flower until, evaporated by a sympathetic sun, it reunites with its “native element” (8). Intriguing in and of itself, this fanciful account of the dewdrop ultimately serves to enrich the description of a more important topic: the human soul according to Marvell and many Christian theologians, who believe that the soul dwells uncomfortably in the beautiful

The word “So” explicitly commands readers to adjust their focus and to look for significance in what they have read, facilitating quicker discernment of the conceit’s nonliteral component. In the second half of the poem, readers learn that the soul, like the drop of dew, passes its alien days on earth with a mixture of wistfulness for its true home in the heavens and fear of defilement in its present estate, the human body. Death for the dewdrop, or evaporation, brings it back to its beloved sky; similarly, death of the human body severs soul from corpse and allows the soul to return to heaven. The intricate detail with which Marvell writes of the dewdrop’s origins, appearance, and behavior in the poem enables Marvell to speak concisely of the soul in the second half. His attention to different aspects of the dewdrop allows readers to realize certain characteristics of the soul through the power of suggestion rather than through overt statement. For example, his description of the way the dewdrop “[r]ound in itself encloses:/And in its little globe’s extent/Frames as it can