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Recommended: Concept of love
Is love an emotion we feel naturally, or is it something that needs to be learned? Is the idea of loving someone a journey in which you grow together, or is there really such a thing as ‘love at first sight’? Vivek Shraya’s narrative She of the mountains and bells hooks’ perspective novel all about love dive into the ideas and definitions of love. Shraya’s novel She of the mountains explores how love is something we learn through experience, how our definition of love can be moulded and changed through those experiences, and how they are correlated to our individual identity and self-love. hooks’ all about love blames society for our reasoning why love fails and how we fail to have a sense of individual identity because of the idea of love …show more content…
Combining a Hindu mythology reimagining with a bi/queer individual who seeks to explore both his sexuality and his idea of love while trying to remain within the barriers of society creates a refreshing, organic view of what love is. Shraya explores how although our general idea of love remains virtually the same throughout experiences in our lives, it is our search for identity and who we are that changes what we will accept in loving relationships. As the protagonist grows within the ideas of societal norms, he finds himself confused and lost as to what he is as both a body and a soul. ‘No one else was attracted to both boys and girls. His desires must be wrong.’ (Shraya, p. 23.) Having no sense of identity in combination to what society says is the norm disables his ability to love himself. He is insecure, withdrawn and confused as to what or who he is supposed to be. He is unable to love himself, and still be true to himself within the ideas of what society expects of him. Shraya poses the idea that when you are confused about who you are, you are unable to truly grasp the ideas of love around you. The narrator misses out on the opportunity to make friends in high school because he has his own insecurities to guard his heart and the ability to love others. The book touches on his high school experience, and I noticed that his high school friends were never mentioned in the novel after he had graduated; this conveys the image that when someone is insecure and unable to love themselves, they limit the ability of other peoples love to come into their lives. From this section of the book, a reader can take away that the when someone is confused or uncertain of their identity they are unable to truly identify with others and therefore are unable to open up to love and relationships. This does not mean that we are never going to be able to love, but that we need to understand ourselves, our morals, values and our
In The New Humanities Reader edited by Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. We read about Barbara Fredrickson the author of the book “Love 2.0” copy right (2013). Barbara Fredrickson is a psychologist who show in her research how our supreme emotion affects everything we Feel, Think, Do and become. Barbara also uses her research from her lab to describe her ideas about love. She defines love not as a romance or stable emotion between friends, partners and families, but as a micro-moment between all people even stranger (108). She went farther in her interpretation of love and how the existence of love can improve a person’s mental and physical health (107). Through reading
Both author’s illustrate well, that a lack of love can have a profound effect on the behavior of a person. Whether a person has never experienced love by fortune or by design, the initial introduction of love into
Young love , a thrilling time for many . A time in where blinded young-lings cross a field unknown . A field in which one must undergo challenges and temptations . Here we have a young girl that encounters a young man , a typical boy meets girl scenarios , So it would seem . The desire to be loved can drive a person to do the craziest of things ; we are all walking proof of that . As young children one learns to express emotion through every gesture and every facial expression , through that process one realizes ones self hatred with rejection . Living in a world in which we strive to be accepted and crave to be desired . In society each gender faces different experiences ; as a man one expects a provider , a leader , a hunter and as a women
Andrew Sullivan, author of, What is a Homosexual, portrays his experience growing up; trapped in his own identity. He paints a detailed portrait of the hardships caused by being homosexual. He explains the struggle of self-concealment, and how doing so is vital for social acceptation. The ability to hide one’s true feelings make it easier to be “invisible” as Sullivan puts it. “The experience of growing up profoundly different in emotional and psychological makeup inevitably alters a person’s self-perception.”(Sullivan)This statement marks one of the many reasons for this concealment. The main idea of this passage is to reflect on those hardships, and too understand true self-conscious difference. Being different can cause identity problems, especially in adolescents.
Love and affection is an indispensable part of human life. In different culture love may appear differently. In the poem “My god my lotus” lovers responded to each other differently than in the poem “Fishhawk”. Likewise, the presentation of female sexuality, gender disparity and presentation of love were shown inversely in these two poems. Some may argue that love in the past was not as same as love in present. However, we can still find some lovers who are staying with their partners just to maintain the relationship. We may also find some lovers having relationship only because of self-interest. However, a love relationship should always be out of self-interest and must be based on mutual interest. A love usually obtains its perfectness when it develops from both partners equally and with same affection.
Most people would say that love is a concept which will always be a mystery to man, because it is so changeable, and therefore it will always be able to fool and distort man’s thoughts. Love can both be happy and miserable, and this makes it very powerful and therefore able to control the entire behaviour of a person. Throughout a lifetime people will unavoidably experience things that will have a certain impact on the individual’s personality as well as further development. These experiences will often become memories that will follow them their entire life. This is also the case in “Mule Killers”, where a father tells his son about the memories he has of the year his son was conceived and his relationship to his father.
Love is something that many people hope for in life, and is universal. Although love is a general term, there are several types of love, which are different in their own way. When most people define love in literature they often think of romance or a “Romeo and Juliet” type of love. Some may even think of an intimacy type of love, which can also be recognized as lust, or a sexual desire. Although these are most commonly known in literature, you have to go even deeper to know the other parts forms of love such as a friendship or family type of love, or a desirable love for something you want or admire. Love can often get complicated, or secret and hidden. For example, when you have a crush, you may have feelings and
It being an allegory, the story 's message behind is difficult to decode in the first perusing. Yet, with his one of a kind approach of magical realism he painted the harsh picture of the society’s exploitation of these minorities in a fairy- like manner, which makes it an extra-ordinary piece of literary work. He portrayed the difficult and miserable lives of both the intersex and transgendered intersex in the society. And how such narrowness of the society needs to be replaced with an imparted appreciation for science and nature and more appreciation of diversity in
Love is a concept that has puzzled humanity for centuries. This attachment of one human being to another, not seen as intensely in other organisms, is something people just cannot wrap their heads around easily. So, in an effort to understand, people write their thoughts down. Stories of love, theories of love, memories of love; they all help us come closer to better knowing this emotional bond. One writer in particular, Sei Shōnagon, explains two types of lovers in her essay "A Lover’s Departure": the good and the bad.
As any romantic will assert, love is by far the most powerful force known to human hearts and minds. This sentiment is espoused throughout history, almost to the point of cliché. Everyone has heard the optimistic statement, “love conquers all,” and The Beatles are certain, however idyllic it may be, that “all you need is love.” Humanity is convinced that love is unique within human emotion, unequalled in its power to both lift the spirit up in throws of ecstasy, and cast it down in utter despair.
Love is an emotional rollercoaster ride, a ride full of high and lows, affection and confusion, devotion and despair. Love can be called many things, but how does one know that they are truly in love? Love is a universal human experience shaped by unique cultural and personal circumstance. You must understand yourself first to understand another human being. In the Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the protagonist Gogol, a first-generation Bengali-American is confused between his parent’s expression of love and his” American” life. He struggles to find himself, while rejecting his own cultural heritage, and uses love to find himself. Throughout his life, he will discover his heritage slowly and what it means to love and to be loved.
Love is pure, divine and affection. Henrik Ibsen through his book “A Doll’s House”, shows that love is the basis of life. Through her book The Awakening, Kate Chopin shows that love is not something you find, but love is something that finds you. In the movie The Stepford Wives 1975, Bryan Forbes introduces love as possession. Whereas, in the movie The Stepford Wives 2004, Frank OZ defines love in a distinct way. He shows that true love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own. In these four texts, A Doll’s House, The Awakening, The Stepford Wives (1975 and 2004), the authors and the directors present the idea that love is the pathway to true happiness.
Love is one of the biggest topics in popular culture for a reason; no-one can describe it and everyone has different understanding and reflections of it.
What is love? We all have our own fantasies about what love will be like when that train finally makes it to our station. We, as a Western culture, think of love as a pot of gold that only the luckiest of us will stumble upon, as something only experienced when the Prince carries you away on a noble steed, as only legitimate when you are “in” it. These fantasies don't do much for us in terms of promoting well being, so I decided to reevaluate my take on love. In an effort to redefine what love looks like for myself, I simply looked up the word. To my surprise love does not have a very expansive, comprehensive definition. It is actually defined quite literally from the Merriam Webster Dictionary as an “intense feeling of deep affection.” thats it. Its almost humorous how such a simple word has acquired such an unreachable, illusory place in our minds. This idea is also drawn upon largely by Barbara Fredrickson in her book Love 2.0. Fredrickson combats the typical westernized fairytale view of love with her own theory, the idea of “Micro-moment positivity resonance” this is the idea that love is characterized by strong positively charged moments, which are shared between you and any other person in your day to day life. There are two conditions to the effectiveness of this theory; one being there must be an internal and external sense of safety, Two being there must be real time physical sensory connection. Once those conditions are met even a small shared connection will prove to be extremely beneficial to ones happiness. Fredrickson takes some of the rarity away from our perception of what love is, and leaves us with something more attainable. Because love and happiness are correlated, more love equals more ha...
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy tells the story of the communist state of Kerala and the forbidden love between two castes, which changes the lives of everyone. In the novel an ‘Untouchable’, Velutha is a carpenter and works at Paradise Pickles and Preserves for much less than he deserves because of his status as an Untouchable in the caste system. Velutha falls into a forbidden love with a divorced woman, Ammu who is associated with an upper caste Syrian Christian Ipe family. Marriage was the only way that Ammu could have escaped this life, but she lost the chance when marrying the wrong man, as he was an alcoholic and this resulted in them getting a divorce. Ammu breaks the laws that state ‘who should be loved, and how and how much’, as their affair threatens the ‘caste system’ in India, which is a hierarchal structure and social practice in India in which your position in society is determined and can’t be changed. Arhundati Roy portrays the theme of forbidden love within the caste systems and shows how they are t...