Topic > living in sin - 686

Adrienne Rich's poem, Living in Sin, tells us that there is a couple living together. The poem illustrates how the woman thought her studio would look like, “she had thought the studio would stand” (1) and how it actually looks, destroyed. The poem also talks about how "a cat chasing the quaint and funny mouse had risen at his request" (5-7). Here we see that a cat has risen at the urging of the man and we can represent that the man has now entered the poem. There is an unlikely feeling between the man and the cat, and this poem tells us how the woman fantasizes what it would be like to live with her partner, but as you can see it's not real. The form of the poem is free verse, meaning there is no regular rhythm or rhyme scheme. The fact that there is no rhyme in the poem tells us that the couple does not get along in the relationship. For example, in the first two lines the speaker says, “He had thought that the study would stand, without dust on the furniture of love” (1-2). The word “had thought” tells us that the woman imagined the relationship would be something she wanted, but that is not the case. The word studio tells us where the couple might live and the phrase “love furniture” follows along with the word studio. These lines might tell us that the study is where they are intimate, but in reality they tell us that the word study refers to their relationship. Therefore, the speaker tells us that she had thought that the relationship would last, meaning that she expected the relationship to be perfect, so that she and her partner would not overcommit. The meter of the poem contains at least ten syllables in some lines others have eleven syllables and the rest have less. Al...... middle of paper ......n it will be an endless loop because even though she was cleaning up one thing, another mess was staring at her with coffee spilling all over the stove. The poem ends with the night that hides the reality that the woman sees in her daily relationship. During the night, the woman can forget all the mistakes made in her relationship and go back to reliving the dream of a perfect relationship. The way the speaker suggested earlier in the poem that the daylight, the milkman, and the beetle's eyes seem to illustrate how they bear witness to how the woman actually lives, is actually the reality of her life repeating itself every morning. The speaker uses a simile comparing daylight to the milkman. At night, the woman falls in love with her fantasy, but sleep interrupts her expectations of the morning daylight that will come and start the cycle all over again..