http://www.startribune.com/stories/1389/33160.html
Donne: “No man is an island…” I saw About a Boy a few weeks ago. It’s based on a Nick Hornby book and it’s a pretty good adaptation, and a good movie. In it, Hugh Grant carries on about how it’s not true that no man is an island because he is an island an so on. (I don’t remember this being part of the book.)
But this is not what Donne meant! In his essay, “no man” refers to other men. Donne wrote: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … 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.”