Barkan provides the historical and literary facts and materials necessary to understand Gandelman. This aspect of Renaissance mapping is significant for Donne studies and Gandelman's essay deserves to be known. The Donne texts that Gandelman cites shift back and forth from the macrocosm to the microcosm. This passage is concerned with community and not loneliness. And the dwarf would be right, except for the conclusion about the duck-rabbit.
Man is part of a community which is to be associated with a continent rather than an island.
Nevertheless, that continent is constantly being reduced, even if only a clod at a time. Donne urges us to stand together in the recognition that each of us will soon enough depart so that the funeral bell for one tolls for us all.