Kylea Hauser
Ms. Lorigan
AP Literature
November 21, 2014
Interpreting Sonnet 55 In "Sonnet 55," William Shakespeare creates a passionate and confident speaker who compares his love to monuments through time to prove that love can outlast anything and is immortal. The sonnet describes how historical monuments could not outlive the power of love and poetry as time goes on. Even though wars may destroy sculptures, war will not destroy the lover’s legacy, which is the sonnet. Future generations will always think highly of the lover because the sonnet will survive through time. So, until the lover’s Judgment Day, he or she will remain immortal through the speaker’s eyes and the poem. The passionate and confident tone remains consistent throughout the poem. Evidence of the speaker’s confidence is that he believes “Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. '(lines 7-8). This means that war could never destroy the lover’s document of life which is the poem. The allusion to Mars, the god of war, also emphasizes the speaker’s confidence because he claims that his poem cannot be destroyed by a god. The passion in the sonnet can be seen through diction such as “shine”, “bright”, and “praise” when the lover is being described through the speaker’s and posterity’s eyes.
The theme of the poem is that love can outlast anything, including time and war, which makes it immortal. The repetition of the word “live” in the sonnet makes the theme even more apparent because it makes the strong point that the lover will have immortality and “live” because of this poem. This is what makes the love timeless. The sonnet is evidence for future generations that the speaker loves the subject so much that he writes a poem to make the lover immortal. A metaphor that can be seen is that the poem is the lover’s lasting memory, which