Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Block 5
1/11/17
The idea of a perfect love is just a mere childlike illusion. The perfect relationship is
nonexistent and only occurs in fairy tales simply because all relationships have their bad
moments. A good idea of relationships would be in Adrienne Richs poem, Living in Sin. In
the poem, Rich allows us to glimpse into what her idea of what relationships are truly like using
symbolism, metaphors and she even uses the poems structure to present her idea of an actual
relationship.
As beautiful as we may have imagined love to be, it does not always play out as wed like
them to turn out. In the poem, Rich emphasizes this through the way in which the poem is
constructed. The relationship itself does not sound like the most healthiest one. The relationship
in the poem sounds plain and dull giving the reader the understanding that the two characters do
not share a connection. The poem has no rhyming sequence and the ending words do not pair off
with the upcoming stanza. The non rhyming sequence could be a representation of the pair that
do not seem to compliment one another. The fact that each sentence within the poem do not
really specifically relate to one another, makes it seem almost as if it is foreshadowing that the
Another literary support that Rich used to prove her point was through the use of
metaphors. In the poem, Rich uses a couple of metaphors that gives the audience more
knowledge in the quality of the relationship. In the second line, the metaphor involves a
furniture of love. It explicitly describes the couples furniture made up of their love. In the
present tense, the protagonist has said to have thought the studio would clean itself causing no
dust to land on their furniture of love. The fact that Rich uses present tense to speak of the
protagonist's thoughts implies that that is not the way she thinks anymore. It is assumed that the
Aside from using both metaphors and structure to convey her point. Rich also uses
symbolism to represent the couples relationship. Rich uses the studio to symbolize the
relationship, in which the studio is thought to be kept on its own by the protagonist represents to
the relationship being free of problems. The the fact that the protagonist used past tense, allows
the reader to realize she made the wrong assumption on her relationship would not require any
input.
In conclusion, Rich uses figurative language and structure for her benefit in order to get
her message across.Rich leaves it to the reader to decode her writing in order to get to the true
meaning in her poem. Rich believes that relationships arent what we paint them to be as she