Love Is Not All Edna St. David Millay

In “Love Is Not All”, Edna St. Vincent Millay, a female American poet, successfully states her viewpoint on love. She expresses the opinion that love is not a necessary aspect of life, however, a life without one is a miserable one. Millay uses personification, comparisons, and the structure of the poem to demonstrate the theme. Millay begins the poem by stating all the things that love is not. However, later in the poem, she changes her tone and says that even though love cannot heal physical problems, she still wouldn’t trade it. The theme of the poem is the idea that love is unnecessary yet irreplaceable. For example, when Millay states “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink”, she is saying how love is not a basic necessity for life

Personification is the author/poet create human-like characteristics for things that are not human. For example, she states “Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone” (lines 7 and 8). Clearly, it is impossible to become friends with death since death is not alive. Although this is true, the reader can interpret this as somebody who has just died. In this context, the reason for the death may be suicide because of the absence of love in their life. Furthermore, Millay says “Pinned down by pain and moaning for release” (line 10). Pain is unable to physically pin one down, however, the descriptiveness of the word packs a punch to the idea of physical suffering. She then goes on to add how she would still not give up love to get release from the physical pain. Edna St. Vincent Millay does an excellent job using personification to deepen her overall message of the

To start, the poem does not seem like the typical poem about love. It begins with all of the elements that love cannot deliver. For example, when she states “Love is not all” (line 1). This creates a tone of where the poet does not trust or believe in the power of love. Then, it goes into saying how people are killing themselves because they do not have the feeling of being loved in their life. She finishes the poem by stating she would not “trade the memory of this night for food” (line 13). This demonstrates the idea that even though one can live without love, it may be even more important than the basic necessities of