Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The importance of communication in relationships
The importance of communication in relationships
Possible factors that contribute to ineffective communication in relationships
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The importance of communication in relationships
Love is unpredictable. Love is sporadic. Love is complete craziness. There really is no rulebook on how to find love or how to be in love. There is also no warning that informs anyone of when love is going to sneak up on them. It is so important to be attentive in all scenarios and encounters because a connection can form under any circumstance and once words are said, there is no taking them back. Imagine a world with a reset button. A world where anytime you say the wrong words, you can go back in time during the middle of a conversation and correct what was wrongly said. In the short one-act play by David Ives, a relationship between two young individuals is built and rebuilt several times on behalf of a bell. Although the play is brief, Sure Thing resembles various pathways and ideas of how human beings individually interpret love and how maybe, just maybe, it is all based entirely on timing. Timing can be the greatest blessing or the worst form of fate. In this specific case, the timing had to be right before the possibility of true love could surface.
The significance of the bell lies in between the lines of the text. The bell creates a barrier that separates the deciding factors of a relationship between two people. It enables the characters to undergo self-reinvention in the midst of the conversation. The bell presses the audience to feel the time passing by while also triggering the opportunity for the characters to meet again. It also creates an environment in which the audience can feel amazed by the endless possibilities of the characters’ conversation. The bell is the determining factor of where the two will go in the newfound acquaintanceship.
Human beings are flawed, and we often tend to say the wrong things at...
... middle of paper ...
...hé love-at-first-sight phenomena—it just took an extended period of time to get there. In other words, once their filtration systems were satisfied, the two felt enough in common to embark upon the spur-of-the-moment journey of love. Bill and Betty found a connection characterized by a rush of positive emotions in a micro-moment.
Although the comedy had a happy ending, it also brings into light just how unrealistic and somewhat random that sort of situation is and how timing is even more important in real life. There is no button in this world to reset time or have any do-overs. What’s done is done. There is only the chance that one person’s timing will sync with another’s timing and their worlds will join as one and embark on the crazy journey of love.
Works Cited
Gwynn, R. S. "Sure Thing." Literature: A Pocket Anthology. New York: Longman, 2002. N. pag. Print.
...r and finally reveal to one another how much they truly cared for one another. Although they both initially were upset at what the other did to them, they took ownership in the role they had played and eventually both individuals were able to win in the end. At that point, Ben didn’t care if he landed the big advertising deal. Andi didn’t care if she was able to be given the freedom to write about the things that mattered to her. This film wasn’t merely a comedy, it was a love story. It exemplifies the truth that love stories can derive from the most unlikely of circumstances.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
In the essay “Everything Now” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, author Steve McKevitt blames our unhappiness on having everything we need and want, given to us now. While his writing is compelling, he changes his main point as his conclusion doesn’t match his introduction. He uses “want versus need” (145) as a main point, but doesn’t agree what needs or wants are, and uses a psychological theory that is criticized for being simplistic and incomplete. McKevitt’s use of humor later in the essay doesn’t fit with the subject of the article and comes across almost satirical. Ultimately, this essay is ineffective because the author’s main point is inconsistent and poorly conveyed.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print
The short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver, is about two married couples drinking gin and having a talk about the nature of love. The conversation is a little sloppy, and the characters make some comments which could either be meaningless because of excessive alcohol in the bloodstream, or could be the characters' true feelings because of excessive alcohol in the bloodstream. Overall, the author uses this conversation to show that when a relationship first begins, the people involved may have misconceptions about their love, but this love will eventually die off or develop into something much more meaningful.
Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. “The Norton Introduction to Literature.” New York: W.W Norton &, 2014. Print.
Abrams, M.H., et al. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. 2 Vols. New York: Norton, 1993.
Baym, Nina. “The Norton Anthology of American Literature.” Rev. 6 ed W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2003.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, eds. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. Print.
Baym, Franklin, Gottesman, Holland, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 4th ed. New York: Norton, 1994.
On the surface David Ives’ “Sure Thing” is a play about two strangers who meet, fall in love and live happily ever after. When analyzed in more depth, the play is actually about the struggle that exists between one’s desire to be an individual and the need to conform, to a certain degree, in order to be part of a couple. The play exposes and discusses the tension that exists between the value of being an individual and value associated with being in love. Love holds the promise that you will always having someone there for you and that you will always have someone to share everything with. However, to realize this love one has to make sacrifices in the process and potentially change who they are.
Simone de Beauvoir, the author of the novel The Second Sex, was a writer and a philosopher as well as a political activist and feminist. She was born in 1908 in Paris, France to an upper-middle class family. Although as a child Beauvoir was extremely religious, mostly due to training from her mother as well as from her education, at the age of fourteen she decided that there was no God, and remained an atheist until she died. While attending her postgraduate school she met Jean Paul Sartre who encouraged her to write a book. In 1949 she wrote her most popular book, The Second Sex. This book would become a powerful guide for modern feminism. Before writing this book de Beauvoir did not believe herself to be a feminist. Originally she believed that “women were largely responsible for much of their own situation”. Eventually her views changed and she began to believe that people were in fact products of their upbringing. Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris in 1986 at the age of 78.
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
Abrams, M. H., et al., The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1986.