Those who commit the offense of having sex without love are solitary creatures - like lone runners, skaters, dancers - whose pleasure comes from a partner who is simply a “factor” (21), and share only in their own euphoria. Through use of simile, metaphor, and literal and figurative language, Sharon Olds reveals her disgust of those who make love without love, and also a somewhat aesthetic awe at the majesty of the act.
Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco and grew up in Berkeley, CA. She was the child of a drunken, abusive father and a meek, depressed mother, both described eloquently in her poem “The Pact”:
“like a stuck buffalo, baffled, stunned, dragging arrows in his side”, of her father;
And her mother: “wept at
noon into her one
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They are extremely candid, even scandalous, and are commended and condemned alike. Her approach toward her poetry can be summed up in her quote from an interview with Dwight Garner: “I want to be able to write about any subject.” And she most certainly does. In the words of a supporter and fellow poet, Peter Redgrove, “Every poem is a wonder – strong, actual, unsentimental and without bullshit – in a world glowing with solid reality” (Kennedy). To the cynics, particularly notable critic Helen Vendler, she is self-indulgent, a sensationalist with a penchant for the salacious (Dillingham). There is eroticism present in a good many of her poems, but it is not always a pure, innocently beautiful sensuality. She is blunt, frank in her subjects, particularly in Satan Says, which is the collection “Sex Without Love” is taken from.
“How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?” (1-2) The speaker plunges right into the poem with a question that remains unanswered and sets the theme of the play. The speaker later repeats the question, wondering how the lovers can achieve their ecstasy, how they can see “God” in their climax and then the “still waters” (8-13) of the afterglow without some sort of deep emotional connection with their fellow adventurer.
“Sex Without Love” is very graphic, despite the fact that there are few bodily
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When they are compared to skaters, the speaker gives no reference to any sort of togetherness. Ice skaters are generally cold, being on ice, and the simile brings to mind the coolness of a person isolated and alone. While the speaker doesn’t say it, the aloofness and isolation of dancing is implied. An image comes to mind, of a ballerina in a solo, with no attendants, no help, alone, and center-stage. The unwanted children “whose mothers are going to give them away” stir up thought of being unloved and discarded. As runners, the chill comes back: “they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind…” (18-19). Nothing could be more literally or metaphorically translated than that.
“These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God”
When young and experimental, everyone remembers their first love and what it meant to them and how it shaped them. They are often fond memories of purity or naivety, however, sometimes, those experiences are haunting and leave permanent scars in people's hearts. “Coleman (1993)” tells the tragic love story of a female speaker and her lover. They appear to live out happy lives while keeping to themselves however, are separated later in the poem by a group of white boys who decide to murder her lover on a whim. Her interactions and thoughts about Coleman shape the fundamentals of the poem to the point that he is the driving force of this poem. His being is the purpose of Mary Karr’s piece of writing and her time with him and without
It was difficult for me to find many parallels between this play and the works that we studied in Canadian Literature because this play does not follow a plot line and does not include many elements that could be relatable to the works we studied. It also does not relate to the themes that were emphasized in our course. However, I found the close analysis of the final scene of a play, acted out forty- three different times to be reflective of the close analysis’ we have done many times in class with poetry and prose. It was interesting to watch these close analysis’ to understand all of the possible interactions these characters could have had. It led me to question the endings of the works that ...
Sex is more than just a physical act. It's a beautiful way to express love. When people have sex just to fulfill a physical need, as the poet believes sex outside of love-based relationship only harms and cheapens sex. In the beginning of the poem, Olds brilliantly describe the beauty of sex, and then in the second half of the poem, she continues reference to the cold and aloneness which clearly shows her opinions about causal sex. Through this poem, Sharon Olds, has expressed her complete disrespect for those who would participate in casual sex.
... love, though can only be found in fantasies, provides a rush; unexpected love gives a sense to people that maybe everything that happened in the past was leading up to this. To sum up the play it is easiest for one to say, “in the dark, with love on the brain, the mind can play tricks and the trees and bushes of the forest can seem to be more than they are” (Dowd) .
It is of particular interest to look at sexuality in relation to the modern daily life. What may seem abnormal and even abject in daily life is constitutive in human sexuality. It goes beyond normal functioning, rationality, and purposefulness, making sexuality inherently excessive. The discrepancy between the sexual and daily life connotes the otherness of sexuality. Freud mentions this in Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality in his contention that perversion should be used a term of reproach: “no healthy person, it appears, can fail to make some addition that might be called perverse to the normal sexual aim.” Although he may have been focusing on the abnormal particularities in normal sexual life, this idea expounds ...
White, Valerie. "Sex talk." The Humanist Sept.-Oct. 2012: 5. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Lolita, portrays this distinction between love and lust through a morally complicated and controversial story. The story consists of many layered themes, which a reader must first sort through in order to make sense of the question of love. The subject most explicitly present in Lolita is pedophilia. Because we live in world of pre-conceived and ingrained societal norms regarding what is “morally acceptable” and “kosher,” and because pedophilia is generally considered one of the most heinous and immoral of crimes, many readers cringe at the very mention of such a topic and, therefore, fail to recognize the underlying and essential question of love verses lust present in the novel. In order to achieve a true understanding of Lolita, a reader must set aside such societal norms and pre-conceived notions. Gaining a true understanding of Nabokov’s novel requires an open and unbiased mind.
"Sex without Love" is a poem by Sharon Old, who states in the opening line "How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?" It starts out with judging those, who have sex outside of having feeling for one another. It describes the sex in the third line as without feeling more as a techniques, which is describe "beautiful as dancers.. over each other like ice skaters." Sex without love to the author is described more as an act, which is performed instead of two people in love, who sex is in love not because of the act but instead of the love of the person. The author seems to climax in the literal sense at line nine : come to the Come to the … then God comes in picture after the act is done. Judgment and sin is the mood of this poem of how two people can commit an act of a heart and soul without disappointed God.
...trying to understand love by reason alone; the play would fail if the narrative is not free to be fantastical and fantasy can only exist where reality is suspended for a while.
Barbara Lee Fredrickson, a psychologist, introduces a new conception of love to the readers. She tries to simplify the perception of love most people have known for their entire life. The special bonds and magical bond that continues the love for eternity are all myths and lies. Something that poisons our minds to be committed to one another. The definition of Fredrickson’s conception of “love” is more scientific than emotional. When defining love, it is more dependent on the activity of the brain, “positivity resonance”, and love hormones. The claim that Fredrickson makes in Love 2.0 does give a critical point of love, that it is simpler than you think. However, not every conception of love does Fredrickson explain it to be biological. The
The ultimate act of consummation between a man and a woman is depicted by Wright as the deepest and most profound expression of pure love that can be mutually partaken in by two fellow human beings. Such an event involves truly uniting the opposite polarities of human existence, male and female, in a selfless act that plays a crucial role in Woman To Man’s underlying interpretation of the human condition. There is an almost animalistic and primal yearning ingrained in the human condition for physical union between a man and woman, as exemplified by the juxtaposed symbolism of the male “hunter” and his prize, the “chase”, that he seeks. Such an attitude towards the physical facets of sexual passion is reinforced by the polysyndeton of “the strength that your arm knows, / the arc of flesh that is my breast, / the precise crystals of our eyes”, highlighting the magnitude of the bodily pleasure derived from this unification. However, there are clearly deeper and more emotionally significant ramifications arising internally, with the combined amorous fervour between male and female capable of producing an even greater gift, that of new life. The result...
In the year A.F. 632 no pleasure is denied to the populous. Hypnopaedia is used as a device to form the moral education of children. What is taught through this method is not true ethics, but warped actions trained by words. An illustration of this is in the teaching of Elementary Sex to children. The society that Huxley created was one where having sex often and with many people was a positive course of action. Anyone who did not have multiple partners, such as Lenina or Bernard, were considered a blight to society. Society as a whole uses the act of having sex as relief from pain and emotions. A person does not have to lust for someone they merely set up a time and place for them to meet and have sex, and it is completely accepted by everyone. When sex is not enough to relieve a person from pain or loneliness they take soma, a drug that stimulates them into happiness. Unlike the drugs of present day there is no set backs from taking soma, no headaches after use, and after all “One cubic centimetre cure ten gloomy,” (60). Finally, there is the concept of feelies, movies that you can feel what the actors are doing. These feelies are nothing more than glamorized porn movies giving the participants quick orgasmic feelings without effort. All these materialistic pleasures are used to substitute an individuals basic emotional needs and to give them a false sense of happiness. Huxley used this warped view on what today’s society deems morally right and wrong to reveal how shallow the citizens of the brave new world truly are.
...h other or from their situation in general. The optimistic view of the play shows a range of human emotion and the need to share experiences alongside the suffering of finite existence; governed by the past, acting in the present and uncertain of the future.
In the first stanza the speaker standing before an ancient Grecian urn, addresses the urn, preoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. This is where Keats first introduces the theme of eternal innocence and beauty with the reference to the “unvarnished bride of quietness”(Keats). Because she has not yet engaged in sexual actions, the urn portrays the bride in this state, and she will remain like so forever. Also in the first stanza he examines the picture of the “mad pursuit,” and wonders what the actual story is behind the picture. He looks at a picture that seems to depict a group of men pursuing a group of woman and wonders what they could be doing. “What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and trimbels? What wild ecstasy”(Keats). Of course, the urn can never tell him the whos, whats, and whens of the story it depicts. As the stanza, slowly leads the reader to the series of questions that are asked. The tone of the poem becomes exciting and breathless until it reaches the ultimatum, “wild ecstasy”(Keats). “The ecstasy brings together the pursuit and the music, the human and the superhuman, and, by conveying an impression of exquisite sense-spirit intensity, leads us to the fine edge between mortal and immortal. Where passion is so intense that it refines itself into the essence of ecstasy, which is without passion”(Bate117). Ecstasy is therefore the end of the feelings the poem has lead to reader to feel. Since the urn does not depict anything past the chase itself, the situation is purely innocent with beauty again complying with the theme of eternal innocence and beauty.
The question fundamental to the philosophy of sex is the question probing into the nature of sexual activity. What is sex? Many have postulated on the subject, but have only further clouded the waters surrounding the subject. There are a multitude of philosophical answers addressing the question of sex ranging from the natural to the phenomenological to everywhere in between. It is essential to the discussion that a proper definition of sex be established before addressing any other issues. I plan to establish a proper definition of sex with an account of sexual perversion and then continue on discussing the nature of cybersex, infidelity, and love.