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Juxtaposition In Lovesong

Decent Essays

Have you ever been in a relationship so broken that it seems impossible to fix? The poem “Lovesong” by Ted Hughes portrays that. This poem was inscribed in the modernism literary time period and was influenced by the death of Sylvia Path due to Hughes still being in love with her. “Lovesong” can be described the ongoing intimacy between a man and a woman. Although the poem is regarding sex, there is an outermost interchange between the couple with anger, bitterness, and envy between the couple. Hughes uses juxtaposition, metaphors, and explicit imagery to showcase a dysfunctional love and relationship between a couple. Hughes depicts juxtaposition in the essay by positioning how the woman feels about the man side by side how the man feels …show more content…

Imagery includes: at the back of her secret drawer, their screams stuck in the wall, In the morning they wore each other's face” (30-33). The reader can paint a picture in their mind that the couple is in the bedroom together making love and the next morning they both see can see within themselves that they were using each other for sex due to the rage that is in their lives. "Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop” (35). You can clearly see that they are done having sex but there is no rationality here. It is not healthy, they are hooked on to each other. Their love is extremely claustrophobic with no sympathy or real eroticism (“Lovesong Analysis”). Hughes interprets a dysfunctional couple by using juxtaposition, metaphors, and explicit imagery. This poem’s effect could be that readers question that Hughes could possibly be still in love with Plath and wants one of his last works to showcase to the world he still loves her (Egeland). Although Plath wrote about her romantic feelings about Hughes, Hughes is more truthful and positive (“Lovesong”). The relevance of this poem is that couples are still like this today and times do not change the way couples treat each

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