FREE ESSAY ON SHARON OLDS AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

SHARON OLDS AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

From the Present to the Future through the Eyes of Love
Plato once said, "At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet." What is Love? Love is
"an attraction based on sexual desires: affection and tenderness felt by lovers."
(Merriam - Webster's Dictionary) We see a lot of love, marriage, broken-hearts, lust, and
sex in today society but also in poetry we read by great authors. A poem such as Sharon
Olds, "Sex Without Love." Also from the past that knew the meaning of love through his
plays, poems, and especially from his sonnets, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 "Let me
not the marriage of true minds." I will analyze each poem and sonnet and show my own
point of view and show the similarities and differences.
In Sharon Olds, "Sex Without Love," she passionately describes the author's disgust for
casual sex. She vividly animates the immortality of lustful sex through her language
variety. Olds' clever use of imagery makes this poem come to life. Her frequently uses of
similes to make the audience imagine actual events. For example, Olds describes making
love as "Beautiful as dancers." (Sharon Olds, Line #2) In this line, she questions how
one can do such a beautiful act with a person whom one is not in love with. Olds also
describes sex as "gliding over each other like ice skaters over the ice."(Sharon Olds,
Line #3,4) She is referring to sex as a performance. Imagine an ice-skating performance,
each ice skater is performing for judges and an audience to win an award. Olds uses this
simile to relate people performing for one another. When two people truly are in love,
there is no need for any special show or performance. Another simile the author uses is
"As wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away," (Sharon
Olds, Line #6,7,8) to simulate a sweaty lovemaking scene. The simile "light rising slowly
as steam off their joined skin" (Sharon Olds, Line #11,12,13) can also be used to
perceive the same image of a hot, sweaty, and passionate love making scene. The author
repeatedly questions how two people who are not in love can perform such a spiritual act.
The simile "As wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away,"
can also be used to represent the outcome of lustful copulation. When two people engage
in sexual activities, a large percent of the mothers choose to ignore the outcome and
either abort or give their children up for adoption. Olds compares the lovers with "great
runners." (Sharon Olds, Line #18) In this simile, she implies that lovers are alone with
their own pleasures. Olds' questions this selfishness throughout the poem. How can two
people be alone in pleasure, when sex is supposed to be both physically and emotionally
shared between lovers? Olds uses hyperbole to describe her belief that sex and God are
entwined. "These are the true religions, the priest, the pros, the one who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God." (Sharon Olds, Lines #13-17)
In these lines she says that sex is more than pleasure, and if one is merely using sex
for pleasure they are accepting a false God. She describes people as hypocrites who claim
to love the lord, yet engage in immoral sex. In the lines, "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," (Sharon Olds, Lines #8-11) Olds describes two people climaxing.
The choice of words wet, come, still waters, and came add to the suggestion of this
climax. Olds uses the sexual imagery to address her subject as well as to convey a sense
of intimacy. Olds' perceives sex as spiritual, and wonders how people can bring a person
with whom they are not in love with before God. Olds uses hyperbole to share her disgust
of casual sex with her audience. Sharon Olds clearly despises people who engage in sex
without being in love. She is able to emphasize her view in a tasteful manner by using
imagery throughout her poem. Olds is able to express her disgust by using imagery to
portray her objection to casual sex.
Unlike Sharon Olds, "Sex Without Love," William Shakespeare takes a different point of
view on love. Sonnet 116 "Let me not to the marriage of true minds," Shakespeare attempts
to define love; by telling both what it is and is not. In the first quatrain, the speaker
says that love-- the marriage of true minds (William Shakespeare, Line 1) --is perfect
and unchanging; it does not admit impediments, and it does not change when it find
changes in the loved one. In the second quatrain, the speaker tells what love is through
a metaphor: a guiding star to lost ships (wand 'ring barks (William Shakespeare, Line 7))
that are not susceptible to storms ("that looks on tempests and is never shaken (William
Shakespeare, Line 6)). In the third quatrain, the speaker again describes what love is
not: it is not susceptible to time. Though beauty fades in time as rosy lips and cheeks
come within his bending sickle's compass, (William Shakespeare, Line 10) love does not
change with hours and weeks: instead, it bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom. (William
Shakespeare, Line 12) In the couplet, the speaker attests to his certainty that love is
as he says: if his statements can be proved to be error, he declares, he must never have
written a word, and no man can ever have been in love. 
The language of Sonnet 116 is not remarkable for its imagery or metaphoric range. In
fact, its imagery, particularly in the third quatrain (time wielding a sickle that
ravages beauty's rosy lips and cheeks), is rather standard within the sonnets, and its
major metaphor (love as a guiding star) is hardly startling in its originality. But the
language is extraordinary in that it frames its discussion of the passion of love within
a very restrained, very intensely disciplined rhetorical structure. With a masterful
control of rhythm and variation of tone--the heavy balance of Love's not time's fool
(William Shakespeare, Line 9) to open the third quatrain; the declamatory O no (William
Shakespeare, Line 5) to begin the second--the speaker makes an almost legalistic argument
for the eternal passion of love, and the result is that the passion seems stronger and
more urgent for the restraint in the speaker's tone.
William Shakespeare and Sharon Olds both have a lot of similarities and differences. One
of the similarities is they both talk about love in there own point of view. They also
both use many key literary terms such as, similes and metaphors. There differences are
shown from what they have to say about love. Olds talks about love in a way it is full of
lust and Shakespeare attempts to define the meaning of love through marriage and time.
Both authors are known for their great understanding and views of love in today society.

In today society, love and sex are synonymous. This meaning love is sex and sex is love.
Society is confusing the sexual act of love with lust. Sex is pleasure and love is moral.

Citation Page
1. Merriam - Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/, Copyright 2001 by
Merriam-Webster Inc.
2. Sharon Olds, "Sex Without Love", print out, Copyright 1942
3. John Schilb & John Clifford, "Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and
Writers," (William Shakespeare "Let me not the marriage of true minds" page 716),
Copyright 2000 bye Bedford/St. Martin's