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Analysis of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
What we talk about when we talk about love essay
Analysis of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
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Gaitskill’s “Tiny, Smiling Daddy” focuses on the father and his downward spiral of feeling further disconnected with his family, especially his lesbian daughter, whose article on father-daughter relationships stands as the catalyst for the father’s realization that he’d wronged his daughter and destroyed their relationship. Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” focuses on Mel and his attempt to define, compare, and contrast romantic love, while leaving him drunk and confused as he was before. While both of my stories explore how afflicted love traumatizes the psyche and seem to agree that love poses the greatest dilemma in life, and at the same time that it’s the most valued prospect of life, the two stories differ in that frustrated familial love causes Gaitskill's protagonist to become understandable and consequently evokes sympathy from the reader, but on the other hand frustrated romantic love does nothing for Carver's Protagonist, except keep him disconnected from his wife and leaving him unchanged, remaining static as a character and overall unlikable. In comparing “Tiny, Smiling Daddy” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, together they suggest that familial love is more important than romantic love, which we relentlessly strive to achieve often forgetting that we’ll forever feel alone without familial love, arguably the origin of love itself.
“Tiny, Smiling Daddy” opens with “one of those pure, beautiful dreams in which he was young again, and filled with realization that the friends who had died, or gone away, or decided that they didn’t like him anymore, had really been there all along, loving him” (Gaitskill 305), and through this nostalgic state the father’s reaveled as a character who ha...
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...e, because she’s too busy running around on some-” (Gaitskill 317) and these words show us how utterly “shitty” (Gaitskill 317) he feels, be it warranted or not. He’s faced with the reality that his wife and daughter are ‘leaving’ him behind, doing whatever necessary to detach themselves from his wretched stubbornness and consequently he’s left miserable and alone to mull over the bitter past and even more difficult present. He begins as a likeable character, but gradually becomes a self-righteous and hateful idiot. But, by the end the reader is left feeling extremely sympathetic for him. Though he’s in fact the bad guy, he gets us to view him as the bad guy whose evil is almost justified, or at least that it’s an inevitable symptom of his difficult childhood, poor marriage, extreme anxiety over what others think of him, and disapproval of his daughters lifestyle.
The relationship between a father and a son can be expressed as perhaps the most critical relationship that a man endures in his lifetime. This is the relationship that influences a man and all other relationships that he constructs throughout his being. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead explores the difficulty in making this connection across generations. Four men named John Ames are investigated in this story: three generations in one family and a namesake from a closely connected family. Most of these father-son relationships are distraught, filled with tension, misunderstanding, anger, and occasionally hostility. There often seems an impassable gulf between the men and, as seen throughout the pages of Gilead, it can be so intense that it creates
Many hearts are drawn to history's greatest love stories, such as Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie and Clyde, and Helen and Paris to name a few. One could argue that humanity’s way of finding happiness is to seek love. Pure, unadulterated love is one of the hardest feelings to acquire, but when one does, they’d do anything to keep it. Through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and his characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, readers discover that this innate desire to be accepted and loved is both our most fatal flaw and our greatest virtue.
“Love is pure, love is painful, love is sweet and love is dreadful” (“20 Interesting Facts”). Love has both up’s and down’s. How people prepare and react to love’s down will determine the outcomes. Poets throughout history have had difficulties with love, and Edgar Allan Poe, author of “For Annie,” and Rick Springfield, songwriter for “Jessie’s Girl,” are no exception. Poe and Springfield’s approaches on love are like peanut butter and jelly, they can go together, but do not mix. While Poe is the fault of his disconnection from love, Springfield has no control over his love life.
Not to mention how one of his decisions is derived from fear for her fate and wellbeing: “’[If she went to her father’s place,] she might be treated more as a nuisance… since she does not yet understand very well what is expected of her’” (Tyler 114). Despite such an action being reprehensible, he did it out of love and adoration rather than sinister
In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, love proves to be a dangerous and destructive force. Upon learning that Sethe killed her daughter, Beloved, Paul D warns Sethe “Your love is too thick” (193). Morrison proved this statement to be true, as Sethe’s intense passion for her children lead to the loss of her grasp on reality. Each word Morrison chose is deliberate, and each sentence is structured with meaning, which is especially evident in Paul D’s warning to Sethe. Morrison’s use of the phrase “too thick”, along with her short yet powerful sentence structure make this sentence the most prevalent and important in her novel. This sentence supports Paul D’s side on the bitter debate between Sethe and he regarding the theme of love. While Sethe asserts that the only way to love is to do so passionately, Paul D cites the danger in slaves loving too much. Morrison uses a metaphor comparing Paul D’s capacity to love to a tobacco tin rusted shut. This metaphor demonstrates how Paul D views love in a descriptive manner, its imagery allowing the reader to visualize and thus understand Paul D’s point of view. In this debate, Paul D proves to be right in that Sethe’s strong love eventually hurts her, yet Paul D ends up unable to survive alone. Thus, Morrison argues that love is necessary to the human condition, yet it is destructive and consuming in nature. She does so through the powerful diction and short syntax in Paul D’s warning, her use of the theme love, and a metaphor for Paul D’s heart.
A father can play many roles throughout a child’s life: a caregiver, friend, supporter, coach, protector, provider, companion, and so much more. In many situations, a father takes part in a very active position when it comes to being a positive role model who contributes to the overall well-being of the child. Such is the case for the father in the poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden. In this poem, readers are shown the discreet ways in which a father can love his child. On the other hand, there are also many unfortunate situations where the fathers of children are absent, or fail to treat the children with the love and respect that they undoubtedly deserve. In the contrasting poem “Like Riding a Bicycle” by George Bilgere, readers are shown how a son who was mistreated by his drunken father is affected by their past relationship many years later. Although both of these poems have fairly similar themes and literary techniques, they each focus on contradicting situations based on the various roles a father can play in a child’s life.
The Lais of Marie de France is a compilation of short stories that delineate situations where love is just. Love is presented as a complex emotion and is portrayed as positive, while at other times, it is portrayed as negative. The author varies on whether or not love is favorable as is expressed by the outcomes of the characters in the story, such as lovers dying or being banished from the city. To demonstrate, the author weaves stories that exhibit binaries of love. Two distinct types of love are described: selfish and selfless. Love is selfish when a person leaves their current partner for another due to covetous reasons. Contrarily, selfless love occurs when a lover leaves to be in a superior relationship. The stark contrast between the types of love can be analyzed to derive a universal truth about love.
Love, however, is not the only factor that creates and maintains a relationship. Love has the power to bring people together, but can also break them apart. In addition, it can lead to irrational decisions with terrible consequences. In this short story Margaret Atwood shows the powerful effect that love has on people’s lives. At first glance, the short stories in "Happy Endings" have a common connection: all the characters die.
There exists no power as inexplicable as that of love. Love cannot be described in a traditional fashion; it is something that must be experienced in order for one to truly grasp its full enormity. It is the one emotion that can lead human beings to perform acts they are not usually capable of and to make sacrifices with no thought of the outcome or repercussions. Though love is full of unanswered questions and indescribable emotions, one of the most mystifying aspects of love is its timeless nature. Love is the one emotion, unlike superficial sentiments such as lust or jealousy, which can survive for years, or even generations. In the novel The Gargoyle, the author, Andrew Davidson, explores the idea of eternal love between two people, a union that spans over centuries spent both together and apart. Davidson, through the use of flashbacks, intricate plot development and foreshadowing, and dynamic characterization, creates a story that challenges the reader’s preconceived notions regarding whether eternal love can survive even when time’s inevitable grasp separates the individuals in question.
Nonetheless, this really is a tale of compelling love between the boy and his father. The actions of the boy throughout the story indicate that he really does love his father and seems very torn between his mother expectations and his father’s light heartedness. Many adults and children know this family circumstance so well that one can easily see the characters’ identities without the author even giving the boy and his father a name. Even without other surrounding verification of their lives, the plot, characters, and narrative have meshed together quite well.
Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway both convey their ideas of love in their respective stories The Lady with the Pet Dog and Hills like White Elephants in different ways. However, their ideas are quite varying, and may be interpreted differently by each individual reader. In their own, unique way, both Chekhov and Hemingway evince what is; and what is not love. Upon proper contemplation, one may observe that Hemingway, although not stating explicitly what love is; the genius found in his story is that he gives a very robust example of what may be mistaken as love, although not being true love. On the other hand, Chekhov exposes love as a frame of mind that may only be achieved upon making the acquaintance of the “right person,” and not as an ideal that one may palpate at one instance, and at the another instance one may cease to feel; upon simple and conscious command of the brain. I agree with Hemingway’s view on love because it goes straight to the point of revealing some misconceptions of love.
Out of this week’s works of literature, the family in “From Going after Cacciato” by Tim O’Brien stood out the most to me. Not that it reminded me specifically of my own family, because I was raised in a single mother household. I would say that the reason it got my attention was because of how Private Paul Berlin spoke of his father so well. My interpretation was that he and his father had great relationship and enjoyed one another’s company. As I was reading the story I noticed he spoke of his father often. He continued to recall what his father had said “Ignore the bad stuff, look for the good.” (O’Brien, 236) His father seemed to have given him some words of wisdom before leaving for war. As a child I always yearned for my father to be in my life. Although Paul seemed to talk well of his father, it seemed to me that there were some unspoken issues between his mother and father. He spoke of how his mother hid booze in her perfume bottles and his father
Cummings theme of how strong someones love can be appeals to readers minds, because everyone wants that connection with their partner, That undying love for one another. Some people long for a love...
The relationship between a father and his son can be articulated as without a doubt the most significant relationship that a man can have throughout the duration of his life. To a further extent the relationship between a father and a son can be more than just a simple companionship. Just like a clown fish and a sea anemone, both father and son will rely on each other in order to survive the struggles of their everyday lives. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Gabriele Muccino’s The Pursuit of Happyness both depict a story between a father and son using each other as a means of survival when faced with adversity. When placed in a tough situation father and son must create a symbiotic relationship in order to survive. Upon the duo of father and son can creating a symbiotic relationship, it will result in a mutual dependency on each other. This theme of paternal love is omnipresent given the bond between the two characters.
In Literature and Life, Love is a powerful force. Sans love; feelings, desires and relationships may seem empty. This force however, can also be destructive, even may end a marriage. Marital discord, arising in general, due to infatuation, lust or affection for a third person, may crop up primarily facilitated by adverse familial, economic or societal conditions that do frequently find their mention in the written word. Some of these concerns like family, marriage, sexuality, society and death, are notably illustrated by the authors, Gustave Flaubert in Madame Bovary and Laura Esquivel in Like Water for Chocolate.