No Man Is An Island

By John Donne

“No man is an island” is a passage from John Donne’s Meditation XVII, part of his prose work Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, written in December 1623, during an illness he expected to die of, and published in 1624. It argues that every person is part of one human whole, so “any man’s death diminishes me,” and it ends with the famous line “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” It is prose, not a poem, though it is usually printed in lines like the version below.

It is quoted today as a warm slogan about community. Donne meant something colder and more bracing. A sick man hears a funeral bell for a stranger and realizes it is also ringing for him: what connects us, first of all, is that we die.

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Summary · The Text · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

No one is complete and separate like an island, Donne says. Each person is a piece of one great continent. If the sea washes away a single lump of earth, Europe is that much smaller, just as it would be if it lost a headland or the estate of a friend or your own.

In the same way, every death makes the speaker less, because he is part of all humanity. So when you hear a funeral bell, there is no need to send someone to ask who has died. In the sense that matters, the bell is ringing for you.

The Text

The text below follows the modern-spelling text of Meditation XVII in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (University of Michigan Press, 1959). The words and punctuation are Donne’s; the line breaks are a later convention.

No man is an island,
entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s
or of thine own were:
any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

Background

The most important fact about “No Man Is an Island” is that Donne did not write it as a poem. In late 1623, Donne, by then the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, fell dangerously ill with a fever, probably typhus or relapsing fever. While he recovered, he wrote a sequence of 23 prose devotions tracing his sickness day by day, published in 1624 as Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. Each devotion has three parts: a meditation on his condition, an expostulation (a complaint or argument addressed to God), and a prayer.

Meditation XVII carries the Latin heading “Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, Morieris,” which Donne translates as “Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.” Lying in bed, he hears the bell of a nearby church ringing for someone else’s death and turns the sound into a meditation on his own. The famous sentences come from the middle of that meditation. The original 1624 spelling begins “No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe”; the version most people know is a modernized extract that later editors broke into lines of verse. We print it in those familiar lines, but the words and punctuation are Donne’s own.

The same short passage produced two of the best-known phrases in English. Ernest Hemingway took “for whom the bell tolls” as the title of his 1940 novel and printed the passage as its epigraph, and “no man is an island” became a proverb. Most people who quote either phrase have no idea they sit side by side in one sentence of a sick man’s book of devotions.

Analysis and Themes

“No man is an island” is usually read as a gentle reminder that we need each other. That reading is not wrong, but it leaves out where the argument is going. Read in context, the passage is a tightly reasoned meditation in which our connection to one another is above all a connection through death.

An Argument, Not a Song

Because it is prose, the passage argues rather than sings. Its engine is a metaphysical conceit, the kind of long, intellectual metaphor Donne was famous for. Humanity is one continent, and each person is a piece of it. Donne works the image out with almost legal precision: lose a clod of earth, and the continent is measurably smaller, exactly as if it had lost a promontory or a great estate. He is not decorating an idea with a pretty picture. He is thinking through the picture and drawing its consequences, which is what the Metaphysical poets did in verse too.

The Bell Is the Conclusion

The two famous phrases are the start and finish of a single chain of reasoning. The island is the premise: you are not separate. The bell is what follows. In Donne’s London a church bell was tolled to announce a death, and people would send a servant to ask who had died. Donne says there is no need. If you are part of the one continent of humanity, another person’s death is a real loss to you, and the bell announcing it is also a reminder that you will die. This is a memento mori, a warning of mortality, not a slogan about togetherness.

Every Death Counts the Same

Notice how democratic Donne’s grief is. In the conceit, the loss matters whether the sea takes a mighty headland or a humble clod, a friend’s manor or your own. Applied to people, that means every death, of anyone, anywhere, diminishes you. For Donne the clergyman, this was also theology: humanity as one body in Christ, where no member can suffer without the whole body suffering. To hear of a stranger’s death and shrug is, by his logic, to misunderstand what you are.

Form and Technique

Strictly speaking, the passage has no poetic form: no meter, no rhyme, and no lines in the original. It is rhythmic prose written like one of Donne’s sermons, and that rhythm is why it breaks so easily into lines and is so often mistaken for a poem. It moves in balanced, repeated clauses (“as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor”), and it follows the shape of a proof: premise, worked example, personal conclusion, and a final “therefore.”

Two techniques do most of the work. One is the sustained conceit, which lets an abstract claim about human unity be argued in concrete, physical terms. The other is direct address. Donne keeps turning to the reader, “thy friend’s,” “thine own,” “it tolls for thee,” so that you cannot stand outside the argument. The last clause, “it tolls for thee,” is four one-syllable words, the plainest possible language carrying the heaviest possible meaning.

Notable Lines

Three sentences take the meditation from its premise to its personal stakes to its conclusion.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Meditation XVII

The premise and the conceit in one clause. Everything else in the passage follows from this image of humanity as a single landmass.

any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,

Meditation XVII

The turn from geography to grief. “Involved in mankind” is the hinge: to be part of the whole is to be reduced by every loss to it.

and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Meditation XVII

The conclusion, and one of the most famous sentences in the language. A bell rung for a stranger becomes a personal summons.

Themes

Three ideas run through the passage.

Human connection. No one exists apart from everyone else. Each life is part of a shared whole, and each loss is shared too.

Mortality. The passage is a meditation on death, written by a man who thought he was dying. Every funeral bell is a rehearsal for your own.

Faith and compassion. For Donne, caring about a stranger’s death is not only kindness. It follows from what humanity is: one body before God.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers ask most often about “No Man Is an Island.”

What does “no man is an island” mean?

It means that no one is truly separate from other people. Donne argues that everyone is part of one human whole, so every death is a loss to each of us.

Who said “no man is an island”?

John Donne, the English poet and Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, wrote it. The phrase comes from Meditation XVII of his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, published in 1624.

Is “No Man Is an Island” a poem?

No. Donne wrote it as prose, as part of a devotional meditation. It is often printed in lines as a poem because of its strong rhythm, but the line breaks were added by later editors.

When was “No Man Is an Island” written?

Donne wrote it in December 1623, while recovering from a serious fever. It was published in 1624 in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.

What does “for whom the bell tolls” mean?

It refers to a church bell rung to announce a death. Donne says you need not ask who has died, because the bell “tolls for thee”: every death reminds you that you will die too.

Glossary

A few words whose older senses are easy to miss.

• entire of itself (line 2): Complete on its own, needing nothing else.
• the main (line 4): The mainland. “A part of the main” means a part of the continent itself.
• clod (line 5): A lump of earth, the humblest possible piece of land.
• promontory (line 7): A high point of land jutting into the sea; a headland.
• manor (line 8): A landed estate, the house and lands of a lord.
• involved in (line 11): Wrapped up in, bound together with.
• tolls (line 12): Rings slowly and solemnly, as a church bell does to announce a death.

In Popular Culture

Both halves of the passage have become titles in their own right.

Ernest Hemingway’s novel of the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), takes its title from the passage and prints it as the epigraph. It was filmed in 1943 with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, and Metallica’s song “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” on Ride the Lightning (1984), was inspired by the novel.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton borrowed Donne’s other phrase for his book of spiritual essays, No Man Is an Island (1955).

Paul Simon’s song “I Am a Rock” (1965), recorded by Simon and Garfunkel, answers Donne from the other side, with a narrator who insists that he is an island and wants to stay that way.

Related Poems

These poems face the same bell.

• Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne: Donne’s Holy Sonnet that faces death directly and tells it that it has no real power.
• Sonnet 71 by William Shakespeare: Another poem built around the funeral bell, the “surly sullen bell” that announces the speaker’s death.
• Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson: A calmer journey toward death, imagined as a carriage ride.
• Crossing the Bar by Alfred Tennyson: A short, serene poem of faith in the face of death, written near the end of Tennyson’s life.