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Love in literature essay
Love in victorian literature
Love in literature essay
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Woebegone Lover and Wayman in Love
Although in an ideal world it would fit that our lover was a soulmate, most rational people would agree that this is not always the case. Tom Wayman's "Wayman in Love" details an encounter between a man and a woman that, although devoid of true love, the man feels has been a long time coming. Conversely, Carol Jane Bangs' "Touching Each Others Surface's" is the remembrance of a love that is no longer alive. Both of these poems explore the topic of physical encounters that possess no feeling. However, they do so from opposite ends of the spectrum. While "Wayman in Love" is the story of a one-night stand (and therefore devoid of real emotion), "Touching Each Other's Surfaces" is a tale of love long past.
Tom Wayman's "Wayman in Love" is a satirical look at the consequences of passion and sex through the eyes of one of the participants. Jut as the main character has finally succeeded in persuading a young lady to join him in passionate embrace, he feels the tug of conscience in the form of a nineteenth-century thinker who joins the couple under the covers. "I'm here to consider for you the cost of a kiss" (11), says the intruder, a gentleman by the name of "Doktor Marx". Since Wayman had previously been "locked in one of those embraces so passionate that his left arm was asleep"(2-3), it is clear that the young man is now having second thoughts about his one-night stand.
After the initial shock wears off, the main character is able to regain enough composure to break into Doktor Marx's outline of "costs" of the encounter. These costs are not limited to fiscal matters, but also include the eventuality of longterm commitment and the hinted possibility of sexually transmitted diseases (a...
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...and "Touching Each Other's Surfaces" both deal with a romantic encounter that is not based on love. Tom Wayman's poem is a story recounting the inner turmoil faced by a young man who has finally captured his sexual quarry. While Wayman does face the humiliation of losing his focus (among other things), his situation pales in comparison to that of the speaker in the poem by Carol Jane Bangs. "Touching Each Other's Surfaces" chronicles an act of passion, with no love to be shared anymore. Both of these poems show a wish that the moment would not end, and both speakers know that it will never happen again. However, for Mr. Wayman, the consequences are only a night of failed pleasure and embarrassment. For the speaker in "Touching Each Other's Surfaces," the love is gone and all that is left are the night and memories.
Although their love has endured through many years, it has come to an end in the story. All throughout the story the couple is reminiscing about their life and while they are there are some odd details that are strewn throughout.
"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own," said Robert Heinlein (YourTango). Affirmative, love can be really powerful in which the value of love from others is the greatest ecstasy in life. Love is existence everywhere around us; we are born to love and love to die with the love of family, lovers, and friends. In Galway Kinnell’s poem “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” Kinnell writes about the love between parents and child, and it was published in 1980. Kinnell was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He is married, and has a son and two daughters on his own, so that the poem “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” is relating to his own married life as he mentions about his son, Fergus, in the poem. Galway Kinnell is an excellent poet for his poems are always “connect to the experiences of daily life” (Poetry Foundation). The main theme of this poem is the speaker of the poem portrays a serious and resentful attitude towards the speaker’s child interrupting their act of passion, but eventually leads into a sentiment of commitment and innocence when the speaker realized that the love of a child is significantly more important than sex. In “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps,” Galway Kinnell uses tone, diction and irony to express the humorous and admiring outlook of sex, and also the effects of children on sex intercourse.
On the other side of the spectrum Parker tells a story of an occasion where she received a single rose from an unknown lover. This poem is a love story but as the author suggests it is not a normal love story, the speaker wants more than the customary roses and romanticism every relationship has.
Some may say love is just an emotion while others may say it is a living and breathing creature. Songs and poems have been written about love for hundreds and thousands of years. Love has been around since the beginning of time, whether someone believes in the Big Bang or Adam and Eve. Without love, there wouldn’t be a world like it is known today. But with love, comes pain with it. Both William Shakespeare and Max Martin know and knew this. Both ingenious poets wrote love songs of pain and suffering as well as blossoming, newfound love. The eccentric ideal is both writers were born centuries apart. How could both know that love and pain work hand in hand when they were born 407 years apart? Love must never change then. Love survives and stays its original self through the hundreds and thousands of years it has been thriving. Though centuries apart, William Shakespeare and Max Martin share the same view on love whether i...
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,
Poets often times share their opinions through their poems. It is not always easily understood. Poets use metaphors, similes, and play with their words to show how they feel about a certain situation. In “Sex without Love” by Sharon Olds, a lot of this comes into play.
The victims evolve into the aggressors, destroying the values they once treasured—all for “three dollars ...
But as the poem goes on, you come to realize that there is a hidden secondary situation taking place. The more obvious parts of the poem is the two parents having sexual intercourse, and the child feeling all alone in their big house. Once the child comes into the parent’s room, we actually get to see them transform into the loving parents that they are. The author illustrates the exact moment in when the child barges in on his parents love making session. “But let there be that heavy breathing / … and make for it on the run- as now, we lie together, / after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies” (Kinnell (917). For some readers, it may be easy to see and comprehend this surface situation. The child is the product of their being, and this poem is about the love the whole family shares. The author uses euphemisms to display an image of affection and compassion versus a nasty and indecent love. Kinnell’s main focus is on the love and devotion between the parents. He conveys his focus through such words like “after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies / familiar touch of the long-married” (Kinnell 917). The act of their gentle and quiet love is what wakes their
Philip Larkin’s poem “Talking in Bed” tells the truth about life and how relationships can slowly descend overtime. It explores the idea that no matter how close we are to someone, we can still experience intense depths of loneliness. The language emphasizes the feelings of what an empty marriage may feel like. The poem also gives the impression it is from the male’s perspective. It is written in four stanzas, each with three lines of ten syllables apiece. This makes it a short lyrical ballad. Through the tone, the language, and the imagery, Larkin is able to create a feeling in which he can effectively criticize and deconstruct the subject of innocence in relation to his current life experiences. There are many examples of imagery in this poem, all of which show two people in bed, lying close to each other, but somewhat distant in their relations as they realize how much they have changed. “Talking in Bed” also shows symbolism and lines that express multiple meanings by explaining the ultimate error throughout human history, man and wife living out their days with each other, yet being completely alone. They are not able to find the words that were once there, or knowing that the words that were once there never had true meaning.
This unique love poem by George Herbert seems both simple and complex at the same time. There are many levels which display the depth of Herbert’s writing. He gives a three stanza poem, six lines each with the rhyme scheme of: A, B, A, B, C, C, and the lines alternating ten and six syllables. This simple and gentle form, that never deviates, gives the reader a tranquil and soothing feeling, adding an extra dimension to the overall poem. The malleable words and enjoyable rhymes gives the look and feel of a candle-light dinner with soft music playing in the background. Love is a love poem with three distinct levels of meaning: the literal, allegorical, and the religious.
Or, is love unobtainable? Does the essence of time and mankind's free will preclude love? In answering these questions, the poem's creators convey their philosophical beliefs about love, time, and free will, with the use of figurative language, diction, syntax, and particularly with repeated words and phrases, line and sound patterning. These poetic techniques interact with the meanings and associations of the poems' words, phrases, lines, and stanzas to contribute to our pleasure and understanding. Optimism infuses the tone of both poems.
Cynthia Rylant, William Stafford, and Joni Mitchell all convey a similar message in their literature works.The story “Checkouts”, the poem “Fifteen”, and the song “Both Sides Now” all express the idea of romanticizing realities. In “Checkouts” the girl has “that moment” when she immediately falls in love with the bag boy after he breaks a jar of mayonnaise. This conveys the cliche of instant love, or seeing someone and immediately falling for them. The bag boy falls for her the same way at the same time. In “Fifteen”, the young teenage boy finds a motorcycle, engine running, laying on the ground. At that moment he imagines jumping on the motorcycle and riding away, over the hills and all the way to the end of the road. In “Both Sides Now”,
When We Two Parted focuses on the diminished relationship between two people. Relationships and love have been degraded and torn apart by the glorification of affairs and cheating because of social media, modern day movies and television. In this poem it is inferred that there are two people having this affair who seem to be sneaking around and keeping things quiet. Until one of the partners distanced themselves from situation. In When We Two Parted, George Gordon utilizes theme, mood, and realism to enhance the understanding of affairs.
This poem has captured a moment in time of a dynamic, tentative, and uncomfortable relationship as it is evolving. The author, having shared her thoughts, concerns, and opinion of the other party's unchanging definition of the relationship, must surely have gone on to somehow reconcile the situation to her own satisfaction. She relishes the work entailed in changing either of them, perhaps.
So in these two Donne poems, "Elegy 19" and "The Sun Rising", various poetic structures are used to create a split atmosphere of both romantic love and sexual love, which coexist within the fabric of the poetry. Donne skillfully uses such forms as direct address, indirect address, both stanzaic forms conventional and unconventional, and adept language manipulation to convey two messages simultaneously, and in doing so he paints an accurate portrait of the reality of love: that there is always a mix of romantic and sexual sentiments in the relationships between lovers.