No Man is an Island : John Donne, Tennessee Williams, & Ruth (E10)

Donne’s “No man is an island” passage within For Whom the Bell Tolls (Meditation XVII) says that human beings are not separate moral units. Every death, every suffering, every loss diminishes the whole. The bell tolls for everyone because one person’s loss belongs to the human community. Bottom line in this, Donne is saying You cannot save yourself by treating another person’s life as separate from your own. Every person is part of the larger “continent” of mankind. So when even one life is washed away, the whole world is made smaller.

No one is spiritually or morally separate.
Every person is part of the same human whole.
So when one person dies, everyone is diminished.
The famous bell is a death bell. Donne says you should not ask, “Who died?” as though the death belongs only to someone else. The bell tolls for you, too, because another person’s death is a loss to the shared human body/community/ISLAND. The point is not simply to “be compassionate.” It is more radical - Your life is bound up with everyone else’s life, whether you admit it or not. This is true in WB if you believe in how to break the curse, but I believe the writers are saying something deeper here.

The embroidered passage/quote that Ruth read by Tennessee Williams is undeniably compatible. He is saying the world is not just tragic; it is unstable, forceful, changeable, and devouring. In his words, “violent and mercurial.” You cannot fully control what it will do to you. No one can. The only thing worth rescuing from that burning building is love. Because the world is chaos. It will “have its way with you.” Love is not a luxury. Love is the thing you keep rescuing from catastrophe. The “burning building” reference means that love can/should feel like something you have to carry out of danger again and again. It is not something you simply or easily possess.

Ruth’s reads what I believe is the answer to the town’s sacrificial logic of because “the world is violent and mercurial,”, then someone(s) must be offered up. Ruth,instead, is communicating that the world is violent, therefore love and humanity are the things we must refuse to surrender.

Ruth is especially important and perfectly placed here, IMO, because she is not grandiose. She is not framed as a warrior, ruler, or obvious mythic heroine. She is ordinary. She is socially useful in quiet ways, many of which we learned in E10. She belongs to the fabric of the place. She deserves to be there.

Ruth’s apparent “smallness” is the trap. If the town can convince itself she is small enough to sacrifice, then anyone can be made small enough. That is Donne’s meditation. He is not saying only great people matter. He is saying any person’s loss diminishes the whole.
The Williams quote also pushes against the show’s broader female pattern. Widow’s Bay keeps circling women as the bodies through which the island survives, remembers, hides, inherits, or pays. Women become vessels: of bloodline, curse, history, domestic labor, grief, care, sexuality, maternal protection, social continuity.

Very quick recap because it’s late and this may be very repetitious:

Donne: No one is separate. Any death affects the collective. And you never know who it’s going to be, but it comes for us all. It affects the whole.

Williams: The world will hurt us anyway; save love. Always.

Ruth: Re: her trolley problem answer. If we sacrifice love to survive, we may survive biologically, but we have already become spiritually ruined.

Bottom line: You cannot cut Ruth away from the community and pretend the community remains whole (Donne). In a world already on fire, the first thing people are tempted to abandon is love, but that is exactly what must be saved (Williams).

The bell tolls for Ruth, AND it tolls for the town that considers killing her. The burning building is not Shelter 3, it’s all of Widow’s Bay itself. And the thing at risk of being lost in the fire (AKA the storm or tornado or boogeyman or the angry sea or a cocktail party gone awry) is love, mercy, and the town’s remaining soul.

These writings and philosophies are in stark opposition to the “life for life,” as Richard Warren’s pact directs.

Give me season 2 to explore this now, please!

P.S. I left out Hemingway intentionally, but feel free to discuss if/how his book fits in. I personally find the others far more interesting.

P.P.S. Did our eldest baddie live or die?