In five pages this essay offers a linguistic analysis of the poem by Margaret Atwood and the connotations of love it features. Two sources are cited in the bibliography.
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is meant by "love." Atwood accomplishes this by exploring the many connotations, or "variations," in which this word is used. First of all, she shows how "love" is employed
in all sort of circumstances that are not "love." To understand this dichotomy, consider that Greek has three words for "love," with each word connoting a different aspect
of the emotion for which English only has this one puny word. There is romantic, erotic love. The love that exists between friends, and love on a spiritual level. But
English has only just the four letter word. Therefore, love becomes what Atwood calls the "word we use to plug holes with" (lines 1-2). By exploring the word "love," Atwood
arrives at a fuller understanding of the emotion that "love," as an abstraction, represents. Point #1: Love has many connotations -- love "sells The first stanza of the poem
addresses the fact that one can say that an individual "loves" their car, or "loves" playing golf, and use precisely the same word that is applied to loving ones children,
spouse, or parents. As Atwood puts it, this word fills the "heart-/shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing/ like real hearts" (lines 3-5). Just add lace "and you can
sell / it (lines 6-7). And, indeed, love sells well -- everything from cars to toothpaste -- filling whole magazines -- "you can / rub it all over your body
and you/ can cook with it, too" (11-13). The instances where "love" is applied to inanimate objects in advertising is simply absurd. The housewife stands beaming with pride at a
newly polished floor, or a man might be pictured as erotically rubbed his car. Seeing that "love" is definitely Western civilizations all-purpose word, Atwood goes on to speculate that