Summary Of The Ache Of Marriage By Denise Levertov

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Poetry seeks to convey a message, whether direct or indirect. As the audience, it’s our job to dissect the meaning in order to fully uncover the emotions that the poem is trying to express. As with all poetry, the poem “The Ache of Marriage” by Denise Levertov, found on page 863 in Volume II, uses aspects of poetry as a tool to assist in communicating her thoughts. Levertov applies the theme of marriage, love, and religion to discuss the up and downs of the institution of marriage. The poem by Levertov is best summarized as a woman speaking to her significant other about the painful experience of their marriage. The first line begins by restating the title in an act to reaffirm how much the speaker thinks marriage aches, as well as an introduction to what the theme of the poem will be. In the second line, she compares the ache of marriage to the ache of the thigh and tongue. She goes on to say in the third line that the aches …show more content…
The line “it is leviathan and we” (8), refers to a sea monster who swallowed Jonah in the bible. She goes on to say that the married couple are inside the leviathan’s belly and are “looking for joy, some joy/not to be known outside of it” (10-11). The use of the word leviathan also uses a negative connotation to imply that marriage can have the qualities of a monster. By the last two lines of the stanza, the author is saying that when the couple enters a marriage, they are trapped and says that they are looking for happiness in the marriage because they think that’s the only place joy can be found. The cryptic line “not to be known outside of it” (11), implies that the only reason the couple is looking for joy inside the marriage or the leviathan’s stomach, is because they don’t know that joy is actually outside of the marriage. In addition to the use of connotation and allusion, the use of metaphor can also be found in the comparison of marriage and the

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