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The definition of love
Love in literature essay
What is the true meaning of "love"? essay
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Dictionaries define love as “a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.” (“Love” 1) Love is an important component in life because this feeling can give people a support network, a feeling of worth, as well as many other positive things. Love can be a great thing but it can also be harmful. Meaning it can cause more negative impacts for the person than positive impacts but these types of relationships with people are still important learning aspects in life. Many works of literature incorporate different forms of love. The works The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cosneros, The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks, and How do I love thee? Let me Count the Ways by Elizabeth Barrett Browning are great examples of love in literature and each take to a different twist of love.
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros demonstrates ideas of love. The love in this story is portrayed as more the need to have support and the feeling of worth, importance and worth rather than the materialistic objects in life. Since the family in the work do not have an excess amount of money, they cannot afford some of the nonessential things that they may want. “They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn’t have to move each year.” (Cisneros 99) This quote shows that the family may not have all the big house they want but they do still have a roof over their head. Although, they may not afford some materialistic things that they would long to have they have each other, they have the memories. This love is not demonstrated as a harmful love or even a romantic love, the feeling of love is that seen between families. Love between families does...
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... love of every kind, just like the works demonstrated: family, harmful and romantic. These works give reader’s a way to relate, or become familiar with different types of love. It gives a chance to become familiar with things they may not know. They were all well written and varied so differently that they are a great group to see the difference in types of love.
Works Cited
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” 1850. Voices among Women. Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 208. Print.
Brooks, Gwendolyn. "The Mother." 1945. Voices among Women. Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 205-206. Print.
Cisneros, Sandra. "The House on Mango Street." 1983. Voices among Women. Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 99-100. Print.
“Love.” Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
“The House on Mango Street” emphasizes on this issue, even broadens to explain other controversial matters such as abuse, misogynistic views, and stereotypes. The protagonist, Esperanza Cordero moves to Mango Street where she must witness the abuse affecting her friends, neighbors, and family. Either Sally a close friend, Mamacita a neighbor, or her own mother handling 4 children. Over the course of the novel Esperanza changes physically and mentally. Through the use of imagery as well as complex, descriptive vignettes Cisneros epitomizes the misogynistic views within Esperanza’s
First of all the question rises what is love. Love is having a sense of security in someone. When we love someone we usually mean that we can turn to that person comfortably if all other doors of the world are shut to us. This is the one person that we trust and like to be in company with. In the novel Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano loves Roxane more than anyone else but he is shy to tell her so. When he finds out of her feelings towards another character Christian, who she likes because of his looks, Cyrano finds a way to express his love to Roxane. He decides that he would write to her in the name of Christian who comparatively is a poor writer and "wishes to make Christian his interpreter"(II,85).
In the novel All Over but the Shoutin’ Rick Bragg shows the love and devotion of what every mother should have through his mother. The only woman that Bragg truly cares for and takes time out of his day is for his mother Margaret Marie. Bragg tries to do the best for his mother and tries his best to make her proud of him. Bragg learned early in life that his mother strived to give her children everything possible. For Mrs. Bragg her children are the reason she wakes up everyday and tries to make a better life for them.
Romines, Ann. The Home Plot: Women, Writing & Domestic Ritual. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. 1992.
Love has many definitions and can be interpreted in many different ways. William Maxwell demonstrates this in his story “Love”. Maxwell opens up his story with a positive outlook on “Love” by saying, “Miss Vera Brown, she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter in flawlessly oval palmer method. Our teacher for fifth grade. The name might as well have been graven in stone” (1). By the end of the story, the students “love” for their teachers no longer has a positive meaning, because of a turn in events that leads to a tragic ending. One could claim that throughout the story, Maxwell uses short descriptive sentences with added details that foreshadow the tragic ending.
Liscio, Lorraine. “Beloved’s Narrative: Writing Mother’s Milk.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Vol.11, No.1 (Spring, 1992): 31-46. JSTOR. Web. 27. Oct. 2015.
Collins, Gail. When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2009.
She was not a master of style, plot development or characterization, but the intensity of feeling and aspiration are evident in her narratives that overrides her imperfections. Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, written in 1984, and Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, published in 1925, are both aimed at adolescent and adult audiences that deal with deeply disturbing themes about serious social conditions and their effects on children as adults. Both books are told in the first person; both narrators are young girls living in destitute neighborhoods; and both young girls witness the harsh realities of life for those who are poor, abused, and hopeless. Although the narrators face these overwhelming obstacles, they manage to survive their tough environments with their wits and strength remaining intact. Esperanza, a Chicano with three sisters and one brother, has had a dream of having her own things since she was ten years old.
Sandra Cisneros's writing style in the novel The House on Mango Street transcends two genres, poetry and the short story. The novel is written in a series of poetic vignettes that make it easy to read. These distinguishing attributes are combined to create the backbone of Cisneros's unique style and structure.
Society set a standard many years ago that in a relationship, the woman depends on the man. In The House on Mango Street, woman tend to trust and not have power in relationships. Sandra Cisneros develops the theme that women are inferior to men. This is based on men’s view on power and women accepting their role through the motif of gender roles throughout the novella The House on Mango Street.
(2012). Womanist Mothering: Loving and Raising the Revolution. Western Journal Of Black Studies, 36(1), 57-67.
Sandra Cisneros reveals her feminist views through her novel The House on Mango Street. She does this by forcing the reader to see the protagonist as an alienated artist and by creating many strong and intelligent female characters who serve as the protagonist's inspiration.
Love is a powerful emotion that affects everyone at some time in their lives. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, love is defined as a feeling of strong and constant affection for someone(1). Love can refer to the feelings between a couple in a romantic relationship, or it can refer to the affection one would have with a friend. When love is shown, each person cares about the other. Sometimes, love can be hypnotizing, causing one to do something they would not do normally. In “Gift of Magi” by O Henry and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, it shows that love can make one do crazy things.
In this essay I would like to emphasize different ideas of how love is understood and discussed in literature. This topic has been immortal. One can notice that throughout the whole history writers have always been returning to this subject no matter what century people lived in or what their nationality was.
Victor Hugo once said, “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” Whether in Shakespeare’s tragic play about lovers doomed by fate, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s sonnet describing love, “Sonnet 116”, or O. Henry’s age old The Gift of the Magi, love motivates the characters and authors to make decisions that have a weighty impact on their lives. Throughout these works of literature, authors use love’s power to drive the plot forward to create good events within the characters’ lives. Love is a force for good because it makes people willing to forgive each other, it brings the best out of people in bad situations, and it