Loveless Lovemaking

Lovemaking can be one of the most electrifying feelings shared between two people, yet not include an ounce of emotion at all. Sharon Olds’ “Sex Without Love” suggests that despite sex being such a passionate act, it may in fact not include any love at all between the two partners. Olds’ addresses this matter on a very personal and blunt level to the reader. She questions how some people could have such a fire with each other and be so physical yet never have any true deep or emotional feelings for the other partner. Olds’ almost seems to show admiration for how these people can be alone and not depend on one another, yet makes the reader feel cold and empty from the loneliness of each partner. Perhaps it is just a purely physical act for each person, or maybe it is the result of deep-rooted abandonment issues. For such a beautiful thing, making love can be very impersonal for some people.

            Olds’ opens her poem with the main question of the poem, “How do they do it, the ones who make love / without love?” (line 1-2). This question sets the tone for the whole poem, the dual-views of awe and pity for the lovers. Olds’ follows up with expressing just how stunning the act of sex can be because lovers are “beautiful as dancers, / gliding over each other like ice-skaters / over the ice” (2-3). She is giving the reader an image to relate with of how beautiful and elegant the act lovemaking is, just so they begin to understand. However, this message could also be used as symbolism for something negative. Sex without love has the possibility of being “cold and impersonal” and nothing is much better than ice to use as a symbol for that (Leilani 1). There is also the chance that the lovemaking could be just a performance, just how ice-skaters perform on the ice, it may all just be an act for physical pleasure. In these lines, Olds seems to show the positives and negatives of lovemaking. Olds’ follows through with “fingers hooked / inside each other’s bodies” to show just how close the two partners are during sex both physically and spiritually (4-5). Olds’ sets all of this up to give the reader a good image of how pleasurable lovemaking can be between two lovers. So how could each partner possibly not love the other person or be alone in life?

            Olds’ first major hint of this is when she compares the partners to “children at birth whose mothers are going / to give them away” (7-8). Looking very closely at this line, the reader can get a feeling that there may be abandonment issues in each lover’s past. It is very possible that they were abandoned as a child by their mother which could explain the result of not being able to love another person so easily, even after making love to them. Olds’ then asks the second question of the poem:

                        How do they come to the

                        come to the come to the God come to the

                        still waters, and not love

                        the one who came there with them, light

                        rising slowly as steam off their joined

                        skin? (8-13)

This question is very interesting in the poem. I find that the author repeats the words “come to the” as a way of symbolizing the climax of the lovemaking between the partners. She says “come to the God” possibly because people may say His name throughout the act, especially nearing the ending. Olds’ then uses the image of still waters to represent the moments after the climax, the moment when it is most peaceful and quiet, yet so blissful. She questions however, how each person could go through all of that pleasure, yet not love the person that helped them achieve it, as they lay there, their bodies cooling down.

            After this question is posed in the poem, Olds’ proceeds to describe these types of people, instead of describing their act of sex, “These are the true religious, / the purists, the pros” (13-14). She seems to be using the term “purists” to show that the partners believe they are causing the pleasure themselves without the help of the other person, “They do not / mistake the lover for their own pleasure,” (16-17). This line reinforces the point that they do not want or need the other partner, and the sex was only for pleasure.

            Olds’ begins to describe the people in a rather awe-filled tone, while at the same time using certain words and metaphors that make the reader feel the loneliness that the loveless lovers might have, “they are like great runners, they know they are alone / with the road surface, the cold, the wind, / the fit of their shoes,” (18-20). A runner is usually alone, and knows it, as Olds’ points out. The road surface, cold, and wind, are all words that make the readers feel empty and alone, like the lovers. There is nothing in their world but themselves, and “the fit of their shoes” represents that they will not have room for anybody else in their lives. In a way though, the runner running along the road with the cold, wind, and fit of their shoes could very easily be construed as a very comfortable or refreshing feeling. It all really depends on what kind of person the reader is, whether they prefer to be alone, or prefer to be in love.

            There could be many different reasons why the lovers have sex with without love, whether it is the abandonment issues, for pleasure, or even physical health. When Olds’ states that “their over-all cardio- / vascular health” is a factor, I believe it could be one of the possible reasons the lover does the act of sex without having to be in love, same as a runner runs (20-21). Olds’ continues afterwards to say that everything she listed are “just factors; like the partner / in the bed” which is very bluntly and openly saying that the sex was just an act, a performance for whatever purpose the loveless lover had. Olds’ decides to end the poem with the truth of the matter, “which is the / single body alone in the universe / against its own best time” (22-24). She is describing just how alone the person is, despite having made love to another person. Using the words “single” and “universe” helps the reader to understand just how alone that person is in their own world. The phrase “against its own best time” is a reference back to the metaphor of the runner, it is used to show that the person will not be racing against anyone else’s times in a race, that they are completely alone and facing themselves.

            Olds’ ends the poem bluntly and harshly but she gets her main point of the title across. She seems to almost give respect for the loveless lovers, or even be envious of how they can commit so physically yet not emotionally. Ultimately, however, Olds’ makes the reader realize that they are completely and utterly alone and will not love the other person no matter what kind of connection, even one as strong as sex, has taken place between the two of them.

Expecting To Be Loved

New York City, Grand Central Station, people are moving at a pace most of the country has no experience with. After all, it is the city that never sleeps. John Cheever’s “Reunion” suggests that an attitude of arrogance and pride from a parent can ruin the ability to spend quality, one on one time with a child who is expecting and seeking that from a father. In this case it was the straw that ended the relationship according to the last line of the story, “I went down the stairs and got my train, and that was the last time I saw my father.” (Pg. 256)

            Charlie’s parents divorced three years ago and he had not seen his father since. He called and made arrangements to meet with him for lunch while traveling through New York City. He was excited to see him again. He reached out to his father for a visit while passing through the city. He loved his father and was sure he was going to “be something like him.” (Pg. 256) Without being totally aware of it Charlie may have had some pre conceived ideas of how the lunch date would go that aren’t uncommon expectations for children to have of a parent. I’m sure he expected to have a nice lunch with some undivided attention and catch on up some of the time they have missed apart from each other, otherwise why would he have made an effort to see his dad. Unfortunately that’s not exactly how the story unfolded. There are several reasons why Charlie’s expectations were not met.

The first indication that the there is trouble in the air is when the  it is mentioned that the fathers’ secretary responded with the details of the reunion, that implies that there isn’t much of a personal, father/ son relationship between the two.  A secretary handles a lot of responsibility for employers but some things should be done by the person themselves. Responding to a son that hasn’t been in your life for the past three years whom is reaching out for love would certainly be one of those times. His father was on time which gave the idea that there was some type of importance to the visit. When the two first encountered each other it wasn’t a warm fuzzy embrace, more like a hand shake and pat on the back. It was close enough of an encounter for him to get a whiff of the alcohol on his father’s breath and to notice the after shave. Because of the short amount of time the two had together they quickly moved right into heading to a restaurant. That’s when all the madness started. Immediately after walking into the restaurant Charlie’s father was demanding, loud and disrespectful.  The waiter wasn’t taking the abuse from him. He told him, “I don’t like to be clapped at. I think you’d better go somewhere else.” (Pg. 255)  Charlie followed his father to a different restaurant. They lasted at the next venue long enough to get drinks served and enough time to have a small conversation about sports before the father acted out again. The same behavior of rudeness and disrespect caused his father to leave that restaurant and go to yet another place. He seems to very bossy and controlling especially when he says things like, “Don’t argue with me, just do as you are told” (Pg. 255) to complete strangers. It got so bad that the fourth and final restaurant they attempted to eat at wouldn’t even seat them. They claimed that all the tables were reserved.   

Through the entire visit Charlie hardly spoke any words. His father was too busy shouting orders and demands to employees at the places they were trying to have lunch. Reference was made at three of the four places that the father was always ordering alcohol. That may have been a factor of the unmanageability that was going on with his personality. They met in the train station at noon and Charlie smelled whiskey on his father then so that tells us he had been drinking in the morning. After the last unsuccessful attempt to have lunch it was time for Charlie to get his train home. There was one last episode of his father’s personality aimed at the clerk at the news stand.  During the encounter between the two Charlie had to leave. The last words he said before turning around was, “Goodbye, Daddy.” (Pg. 256)

It leaves a sense of sadness that Charlie’s father couldn’t be present in the moment for the visit with his son. It costed him a relationship with him.

Love is a Waltz

Parents. Just thinking about them creates a waltz with nostalgia. Reminiscing about childhood memories, be it that family vacation to the far off land, dinner at six, Dad coming home from work, even that time spent in the bedroom after doing something stupid can easily invoke that warm fuzzy feeling inside. That is exactly the feeling that Roethke captures in his poem “My Papa’s Waltz.” In the poem, Roethke uses word choice, rhyme scheme and tone to emphasize the unconditional love felt for ones father.

Before getting into exactly how Roethke creates his waltz, it is first important to discuss the time in which it was written. “My Papa’s Waltz” is not a modern poem, it was instead written in the 1940’s. As such, the full understanding of this poem cannot be reached without first coming to terms with the fact that life was different back then. Mom stayed at home, raised the children and cleaned; while Dad was the bread winner. It was the father’s job to provide for the family, and the father in the poem clearly did as evident in lines nine and ten “The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle; “. Without this understanding of the timeframe in which the poem was written, some of what’s said can be easily misconstrued as child abuse or neglectful parenting. Lines one and two are a perfect example of this: “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy;” as without the knowledge that in the early 1900’s it was very common, and not looked down upon, for a laborer to work all day then stop by the bar before heading home, it would appear that the father was neglectful when this is not the case.

Knowing the pretext makes the theme of the poem become much clearer. Rather than a lamentation of his father’s drinking problem, lines one and two take on a whole new meaning. It instead becomes the loving memory of a boy who races to see his father as soon as he walks in the door. This becomes even more apparent when word choice comes into play. Words like “romp”, “cling”, “waltz”, and even the use of “papa” rather than father or dad, all imply a happy time. There are some negative words such as “death”, “scrape”, “beat” however in the way that they’re used, they’re not negative at all. For example, “But I hung on like death.” (Line 3) shows a son holding his father really closely, never wanting to let go. Later in the poem the “scrape” is caused by a belt buckle (Line 12) which again shows a really tight hug. In line thirteen, “You beat time on my head” doesn’t mean the father is beating the son, but rather tapping to the beat of the music. Now, Roethke did use these words for a reason. The alternating good and bad connotations create a real waltz like tone, and they also show how the father isn’t perfect but the son loves him anyway—unconditionally.

The tone of the poem is also very important in determining the theme as Roethke uses many tools to affect the flow and feel of the poem. First, he uses an ABAB rhyme scheme, which creates a verbal sway, a back and forth, like a waltz. He mixes in different rhyme patterns to add to this effect, rather than just using all one syllable rhymes (breath/death, for example) he also uses two syllable rhymes (dizzy/easy). Combine those with the alternating good and bad connotations mentioned before, and the poem reads like a happy waltz. If the poem was about anything other than happy childhood memories, then the tone would have been much different. It would have sounded harsh, or mellow, not happy. Certainly not waltz like.

                Just like in the father, there are some imperfections in the waltz-like tone.  For one, Roethke uses mostly six syllable lines, but occasionally, a line will have seven syllables. A great example of this is in line twelve “My right ear scraped a buckle.”, another example is in line two “Could make a small boy dizzy;” and interestingly both of these lines contain some of the more negative words of the poem. This is no mistake, because that pattern continues with line ten, a line that contains battered. Roethke does this on purpose; he does it to show that while nothing is perfect it doesn’t matter when it’s family. This is proven by the fact that while the pattern of six syllable lines is broken, it doesn’t have any bearing on the overall happy waltz-like tone of the poem just as while there are some bad times or negative words, they don’t have any real bearing on how unconditional a child’s love is.

Everyone loves their parents, even if they’re not perfect. Roethke would definitely agree with this statement, as evident by his poem “My Papa’s Waltz”. Be it through his use of alternating good and bad connotations, his ABAB waltz like rhyme scheme, his use of the slight mistakes in his poems layout, or just the happy tone, Roethke makes it perfectly clear how he feels about a parent child relationship.

Communication is Love

You sit at a table with the one you love. There is a problem in your relationship that you know threatens to destroy everything you have together. You know that if you talk about it your relationship could fall apart because of your opposing views. But if you let it go and ignore it the problem might become inevitably worse than if you just discussed it in the first place. So all you and your significant other have managed to do is scratch the surface and avoid real conversation about this dilemma and time is running out. This could be the death of love. This is exactly the the subject of Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants”. Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants” suggests that couples have difficulties communicating when a situation threatens to permanently change their lives.       

  

            In this short story, Hemingway opens with an american couple sitting at a table outside a train station in rural spain during the 1920’s. They are drinking beers and waiting for a train to madrid. The couple are indulging in light small talk but the conversation quickly segues into something of a much more serious nature. The man starts this new topic by telling the woman that “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig” (Hemingway 690). For the next sixty or so lines the man and woman bicker over an issue that is never revealed to the reader. The remainder of the short story, which is about five lines, consists of the man getting the bags and taking them to the other side of the station in preparation for the train which he is told, by the waitress, will be arriving in five minutes. Then he goes into the bar and has a drink before returning to his girlfriend. When he returns to the patio and she smiles at him. He asks if she is feeling better and with the last sentence she responds “There’s nothing wrong with me, I feel fine” (Hemingway 692). 

Throughout the piece there are many ways Hemingway proposes the theme of communication, namely characterization, symbolism, and tone. The characterization conveys the theme by presenting the man and the woman as relaxed and uncaring. As the story goes on though they seem to become more and more uneasy. When the woman describes the hills through the trees as looking like white elephants the speaker is symbolizing the couple’s unborn child. The tone of the story is one of reserved uncertainty and steadily increasing desperation and uneasiness. This conveys the theme by demonstrating the couple’s lake of real communication.

            The dialogue of the characters is the main attribute of characterization in this piece. We get to know the couple by what they say, not by a detailed description. The speaker does not even tell us what they look like. Yet if you read carefully, by the end of the story you feel like you know the man and woman relatively well. The dramatic shifts in conversation and toward the end, the woman’s determination to not carry the conversation any further are our best indications to the theme of communication. The fact that they are having a laid back conversation about their general surroundings and all of a sudden the man says “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig” (Hemingway 690) gives us a really clear indication that something isn’t right about this seemingly normal couple. for the first five lines of this new topic the man holds a monopoly on the conversation and the woman is hanging her head, looking at the ground. This suggests that they have had this conversation before and it was not resolved, adding to the theme of communication. For awhile the girl seems to rely on the man to carry the exchange. She is asking him if they will be okay if she has the abortion and he is reassuring her that they will be fine and everything will go back to the way it was before she got pregnant. Then at line fifty nine the girl says “Then i’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me” (Hemingway 690), speaking about the abortion. The man goes on to say that he doesn’t want her to have the operation if she is just doing it to make him happy. This chunk of dialogue, lines forty two through sixty nine, are a very strong indicator to a severe lack of real communication between the man and woman. A lot of this dialogue is very redundant with the woman asking if they will be okay and the man saying they will be. They never ask each other what they want and why, and they don’t weigh out the consequences. So they end up just talking instead of actually communicating. The same process starts again at line seventy one. The girl looks toward the mountains and says “And we could have all this” (Hemingway 691), referring to the world. The man then says “We can have everything” (Hemingway 691). For the next ten lines the couple have a very meaningless exchange of no we can’t, yes we can that just seems to upset the girl. On line eighty six the man says “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do---” (Hemingway 691) and then she says “Nor that isn’t good for me, I know.” (Hemingway 691). This exchange tells us that she wants to get deeper into the conversation and talk about both of their wants and needs but all he is doing is saying he doesn’t want her to if she doesn’t want to, which effectively gets them no where, which again ties the dialogue back to the theme of a lack of communication. This also gives us a clue that they have had this conversation before because she was able to cut him off and finish his sentence. On line ninety eight the woman effectively ends the exchange by saying “Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?” (Hemingway 691). This sentence marks the end of the conversation. She is contributing to the lack of communication by refusing to open up and talk about what she really wants. From lines forty two to ninety eight both of the characters says a lot but none of it amounts to anything. He says she shouldn’t get the abortion if she doesn’t want to; she says she will get the abortion if he wants her to. Neither character wants to be selfish or make the other upset. So they spend the majority of the  piece talking but not communicating.

            The most important symbol in “Hills like White Elephants” are the hills that the woman sees through the trees. The woman is sitting at the table, drinking her beer, and looking at the hills in the distance when she says “They look like white elephants” (Hemingway 689). A white elephant is an idiom for a precious possession that is financially burdensome. In the case of the short story, the hills symbolize the man and woman’s unborn child. The couple is afraid of the uncertainty of their future and they know that getting an abortion is a huge decision. On the one hand they are afraid of the responsibility of taking care of a child. On the other hand they are afraid what might happen to their relationship if they do get an abortion. They feel that if they do get the abortion they might be damaged physically and emotionally. All of these things together contribute to the theme of Communication. Because of all their misgivings they avoid the situation by not devoting themselves to a conversation aimed at resolving the issue.

            The tone of the story is one of reserved uncertainty and increasing desperation and uneasiness. The story starts with the couple having a relaxing drink while they are waiting for their train. It is easy to discern this relaxed environment because they are commenting on the weather “It’s pretty hot” (Hemingway 689), and observing their surrounding “The girl looked at the bead curtain” (Hemingway 689). Although the conversation escalades quickly, there is a feeling of ease throughout the story. None of the character’s dialogue is rushed, angry, or packed with too much emotion. Even one of the most serious lines in the story, line eighty one “No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back” (Hemingway 691), does not have a resentful feeling to it, it is almost playful. However, you can tell by the dialogue that both characters are trying to reassure not only each other but themselves by saying things like “I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it”. (Hemingway 690). This mixed feeling of ease and uncertainty demonstrates that they are trying to feel relaxed and act like everything is normal because they don’t want to face the real problem so they bypass it with self reassurance. By the end of the conversation about the abortion there is more of a feeling of desperation and uneasiness. The woman wants the man to engage her in an exchange that will have meaningful dialogue instead of just words. She demonstrates this by cutting him off and finishing his sentences, she is tired of the same old exchange of words. The man is uneasy because as the conversation progresses he is losing the ability to reassure her that everything will be okay. He is worried because she isn’t satisfied with his same responses anymore and he may have to start a conversation with some substance. She wants real communication but is afraid to engage it and he is afraid of a real conversation because he does not want the responsibility of a child.

            The theme of this Short story is that couples have a hard time communicating when it comes to issues they know could ruin everything. Through the use of characterization, symbolism, and tone, Ernest Hemmingway was able to build a perfect example of a couple avoiding things that they should really be addressing. Hemingway was able to keep the mood of the story light but by doing so he actually asserted the theme even more because this dilemma isn’t something that should be taken lightly. If you ever find yourself in a situation with someone you care about that could ruin everything, don’t turn your back, take it head on.