Azizatur Rahma
Singgih Daru Kuncara, M. Hum.
English Literature A 2012
June 8, 2014
Diction
in Sonnet 116’s “William Shakespeare”
This poem was written by William
Shakespeare and was published in 1906. I found several people told me that the
diction is hard to be understood. They thought that Shakespeare chose the
diction of Sonnet 116 accurately. He used uncommon words to portray love in his
poem. Even if he portrayed love used a common word, but his depiction was
appropriate with readers’ perspective. But in my perception, actually
Shakespeare’s diction was not really hard to be understood. The problem was the
blend of the words was unpredictable, and he used several figurative languages.
That is why the poem was hard to be understood for the beginner or the people
who use English as a second or third language in their state.
In the first quatrain, Shakespeare used
the diction which portrayed love as something which cannot be altered. From the
first line I see how the author was confused with the couple. We see here, the
author use “marriage of true minds” to emphasize his confusion. He did not use
“marriage of two couple” but “true minds” to emphasize that the people who
married consciously. The couples believe they loved each other when they are
married, but they “admit the impediments” (second line) or the obstacle in
marriage. I think, the author thought they should not admit the obstacle because
they love each other, they realized their marriage, and with love they should
not feel it as an obstacle. Besides confusion, the author also disappointed
with the couples. That was why the author cut off the word “Admit impediments”
from the first sentence into the second line. I think it is also a separation
between “marriages of true minds” with “admit impediments” area. The couples
who have admitted the obstacle cannot say that they still “marriage of true
mind” anymore. The author also united
“Admit the impediments” with “love is not love” in the second line. Surely, I
think the diction “love is not love” was written to emphasize the
characteristic of something which cannot be said as love. That was why an
obstacle confession was one of characteristic from something which cannot be
said as love. After that the author also wrote another characteristic that something
cannot be called as love anymore. They were “which alter when it alteration
finds,” and “or bend with the remover to remove”. The
