Nicole Krauss's The History Of Love

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Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love is a fascinating tale of interwoven narratives compelling the reader to consider how axial developments in one’s life can both transform and hold one back. On the surface of this book, the plot follows a Polish Jewish locksmith named Leo who has come to America in search of Alma Merminski, an old love he met during his youth in Europe. These characters are connected by Zvi Litvinoff, a novelist who has published Leo’s writing under his own name by translating it from Yiddish to Spanish. The infinities the novel shares of heightened emotions will be explored as a way of portraying how the author discovers her own self-realization. The fact that Krauss, a young novelist with incredible intellectual veracity, …show more content…

As the reader learns of Charlotte, Alma’s mother, the theme of paralysis and misguided intentions comes to light. Eventually the reader learns that Charlotte is in complete paralysis, she is not moving on from the death of her husband, and can barely get out of bed let alone accomplish daily tasks. Though she is a secondary character in the book, she is nonetheless symbolic of wider thematic considerations. As such, Charlotte can be seen as a representation of how loneliness and despair can turn a person into a lifeless and depressive state. Although, we see her begin this process when she is working in the garden and planting flowers, the notion can be inferred that life and death is a constant cycle of change, metaphorically related to the fact that she is planting flowers, almost as if she is giving up on her own life by planting another. The themes of love, loss, despair and authenticity are therefore extremely contextually relevant to understanding The History of Love. As a result, the reader is left with an overwhelming sense of irony that love, loss and death are necessarily part of the same continuum, that is:

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