The Flea

1) I am assuming preceding the first line of the poem means the title so here it is. A flea, in the insect sense, is a small wingless jumping insect that feeds on the blood of mammals and birds. In relation to the poem itself, when the flea sucks the blood of both the man and the woman to combines them and makes them one, which is exactly what the man wants to do with the woman physically. Between the first and second stanza there is a switch between the man trying to show that there is nothing wrong with combining as one and then he talks about their lives together and their relationship its self. Then between the second and third stanza the wife swats and kills the flea and the man gets upset because it was a symbol of their relationship, but she reassures him and says that they don’t need a bug to symbolize anything, and that they have each other.

· First stanza: Contemplative and whimsical

· Second stanza: Becomes more absurd, pace gets faster

· Third stanza: Slowing and reversal of argument.

2) The speaker and the woman are in a relationship however she is not willing to make the ultimate commitment and sleep with him. She is constantly shutting him down about sleeping together and it is killing him. She is not intentionally doing it, I just don’t think she is ready to make that final commitment.

3) The speaker is saying that the flea sucked both their blood and combined it and it was no big deal, there was no loss of maidenhead. So he is saying that having sex would be the same thing as what the flea has done and that it would be no big deal, and that it is what god intended for man and woman to do.

4) That possibly means that the parents didn’t approve of the relationship. Jet, in the line living walls of jet is referring to a deep, glossy black stone. This is of course a reference to the color of a flea, and is especially strong imagery when one compares the lifeless stone with the "living walls". If the woman kills the flea she will be committing murder, disrespecting the flea and she is killing a belief of god, that man and woman are supposed to unite at one point.

5) She wins the argument. He doesn’t like the fact that she killed the flea because it symbolized their relationship. He argues that the flea sucked a little bit of each of their lives away, therefore she shouldn’t have killed him.

6) I think they most likely come to an agreement and eventually soon they will have sex.

7) I have not read apparition, however the Flea is most definitely a seduction poem.