Sex Without Love Analysis

The Controversy of Sex Without Love

Love means different things to different people. Love kindles powerful emotions in every human being and yet it is truly unique for each of us. Today, love and sex are topics that together become very controversial and raise many questions in a society, especially a religious society. One of my favorite poems about love is “Sex Without Love” by Sharon Olds. In the poem, love becomes a contentious topic to write about because it is so particular for each particular person. Olds was raised by fiercely religious parents, which seems to have influenced her attitude towards sex. The poem quite passionately reveals Olds’ disgust for purely casual sex. Through literary elements such as syntax, metaphor, free verse,

“Hooked” is one of the ugliest ways to characterize sexual contact. Similarly, “steak” and “wine” are used to describe not only the redness of their faces when they have sex, but also to suggest a rich, gluttonous consumption of one another. This comparison is juxtaposed with the one before it. It’s fleshy, animalistic. Sex is no longer a superficially beautiful art; it is a heavy meal to be ingested. It impresses onto the reader how ugly sex without love can turn. If the order of these were switched, it wouldn’t be nearly as effective.

Moving on from simply disapproving of sex without love, Olds then points out the negligence and irresponsibility of the act. First, she criticizes the irresponsibility of creating a child without the desire to have children: wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away (line

The word "God", also set off by extra spaces, is further isolated and emphasized because it breaks the rhythm of the repeated phrase "come to the". "God" is not only the grammatical object of "come to the", but also stands alone as the loveless sex partners' orgasmic moan. In line 8 and 9, of course, the word "come" could mean two things, as the speaker questions how the sex partners can come to God/orgasm and to the "still waters" (line 10) without loving "the one who came there with them" (line