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Love and Lust in Play-By-Play, Sex without Love, and Junior Year Abroad

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Love and Lust in Play-By-Play, Sex without Love, and Junior Year Abroad

Lust is an incredibly strong feeling that can prove to be almost uncontrollable, leading it to commonly be mistaken for love. Due to the relative closeness of these emotions, both are often confused, and even when one is in love he or she does not recognize it. Many think that love just comes knocking on one's door and one will know when it does, but they don't realize that for love to occur a relationship has must be worked out. Love is described by some as fireworks, tingles, and butterflies in the stomach; but it is lust that can cause these things to happen, and it is these that mark only the beginning of a relationship. After a while, these …show more content…

At first, one might see the work as condemning people who have sex without being in love; but after further review, one can see how Olds really portrays these people. She describes them as being "...Beautiful as dancers,/ gliding over each other like ice skaters" (Olds 838); also they are considered very religious, and in-tune with their bodies much like great runners are. The characters in the poem are depicted as athletes, agile and ready to compete, much like how the narrator, who talks so highly of them, wants to be. However, once again, only the emotion of lust is present in this piece, and there is no confusion between love and lust.

So many people fall victim to lust, believing that it is something more than what it is. In the poem "Junior Year Abroad," the lead character reveals lust for a man in her homeland, an emotion that quickly fades away after meeting someone during her stay in Paris. The poem begins with an introduction to her situation and reveals that he will come to Paris at Christmas to be with her. "The shelf life of my promise expired" (Rebecca 839), is how she refers to her lover's upcoming visit, explaining how quickly her lust for him has gone away. This poem gives specific examples of how lust can be there one minute, then fade the

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