Unhol Union

What is love other than a chemical signal produced by our brain? This simple reaction is often created into this giant complex situation. Love has many rules, and stipulations. If you fall in love and have sex before marriage, such as the couple in Sharon Olds poem "True Love", or if your partner is of a significant age difference, such as Maude from the classic movie "Harold and Maude", the union that is supposed to be simple and pure is seen as unjust, unholy, and wrong just because society has deemed it so. Love should be as pure and simple as the chemical that helps induce it.

Harold is a young man, maybe in his late teens-early twenties, who has been obsessed with death since his childhood. He often pulls the act of "committing" suicide to get attention from his mother. He attends funerals, drives a hearse all , and dresses as though his funeral will happen at any moment. He seems to not have much, if any, reason to live until he meets Maude.

Maude is a strange woman just days from her eightieth birthday who takes life by the horns. She also attends funerals, but unlike Harold dresses brightly. She finds joy in "borrowing" cars, and has spent most of her life honing her creative side. She is the essence of life, and has Harold falling for her in no time. No matter the age difference the couple hit it off and become great friends.

Everything about the couple is screwed and would be seen as wrong by others. Harold's love of death and constant suicides breaks any of societies idea of normal, but the act of suicides is frowned upon and considered illegal and a sin in todays society. Maude's love of adventure has her breaking the law numerous times. She drives without a license, steals cars (and police motorbikes, as seen in...

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...eads, or look down upon those seen as wrong. Love is not considered in any way to be as pure as it is depicted in stories and tales. Instead, it is has rules and stipulations; Lines cannot be crossed, unions not met. Love has become complicated. Time has changed what has always been apart of human nature. Hundreds of years ago, Fourteen year olds were marring Thirty year olds and bearing them children. Now a man of twenty has cannot love a woman of eighty for it is unholy and just. Harold and Maude did not faulter in their relationship, even until the day Maude passed. Harold expressed his love to her, just as he would to a woman of Thirty or sixteen. Harold expressed love just as love should be expressed, as pure and simple. Even as Maude told him to go and love some more, Harold expressed to her the words that could only be said through love : "Never, never".