I decided to write this in pencil, knowing it would have to be transcribed onto a computer later because it seemed natural. I forgot how easy they are to use when time has given me so much technology, time has given me a computer. Natural seems the most appropriate thing to do when referencing a story about love. Love is something ironically so cliché and so important that I always take it for granted, like this beautiful piece of yellow painted wood with a small number two engraved into it. Like love, when using a pencil sometimes mistakes are made, but the eraser like time doesn’t fully cover them up ever. Pretending mistakes don’t exist, doesn’t make them go away, only writing something more profound over it can make it seem that way. I read Ray Bradbury’s “A Story About Love” and couldn’t help but smile at the timeless love story told about two people who fell in love with each other twice. The story made it obvious that even after losing love it really can be rekindled no matter how absurd it seems; if we just take the time and talk and relearn about each other, laugh along the way, and remember what it was that made us fall in love in the first place.
Often when people start to drift apart, the first thing they do is stop talking. The two lovebirds in this tale, William Forrester and Helen Loomis, spent their days after meeting “reacquainting” themselves with each other. For twenty-five days straight, the two of them relived their lives for each other during conversation. They learned both were capable of engaging in stimulating conversation with each other because they had so much in common. “They talked of art, of literature, of life, society and politics[.]” (Schwiebert 251) When two people are away from each other, it...
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...e with a ninety-five year old woman, but laughing makes everyone younger. Doubting reincarnation can’t change the fact that they knew each other, loved each other, always had, and probably always would. None wants to end up a “meticulous old bachelor” (Schwiebert 249) or deserving their fate for missing their chance. If one chooses to respect Ray Bradbury’s stance as a fantasy writer, it can really cast doubts about the lessons learned from this story. When I hand this over to my computer to be typed, maybe I will make that last line disappear. Then I can live in the fantasy world where mistakes are never made and love is never lost, so there will be no need to learn anything from this story.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. “A Story About Love.” Reading and Writing from Literature. Ed. Suzanne Phelps Weir. Third Edition. Boston: Houghton Milfflin Company, 2005. 247-256.
Frost, Robert. “The Lover Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2007. 696-697.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. 60th Anniversary Edition. New York, NY: A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1951. 001-158. Print.
In many novels written by J.D. Salinger, there is a recurring theme of love that
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.
The short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver, is about two married couples drinking gin and having a talk about the nature of love. The conversation is a little sloppy, and the characters make some comments which could either be meaningless because of excessive alcohol in the bloodstream, or could be the characters' true feelings because of excessive alcohol in the bloodstream. Overall, the author uses this conversation to show that when a relationship first begins, the people involved may have misconceptions about their love, but this love will eventually die off or develop into something much more meaningful.
Love caused his logic and sensibility to fail him, and provoked him to commit monstrous acts that destroyed many lives. Through analysis of “Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood, it can be concluded that one of her many intended lessons was to show the value and the powerful effects of love. Atwood successfully proved this lesson by using powerful examples of both successful and disastrous relationships to illustrate the positive and negative effects of love. Atwood truly demonstrated what it is like to follow your heart.
Some may say love is just an emotion while others may say it is a living and breathing creature. Songs and poems have been written about love for hundreds and thousands of years. Love has been around since the beginning of time, whether someone believes in the Big Bang or Adam and Eve. Without love, there wouldn’t be a world like it is known today. But with love, comes pain with it. Both William Shakespeare and Max Martin know and knew this. Both ingenious poets wrote love songs of pain and suffering as well as blossoming, newfound love. The eccentric ideal is both writers were born centuries apart. How could both know that love and pain work hand in hand when they were born 407 years apart? Love must never change then. Love survives and stays its original self through the hundreds and thousands of years it has been thriving. Though centuries apart, William Shakespeare and Max Martin share the same view on love whether i...
Ninety percent of Americans marry by the time that they are fifty; however, forty to fifty percent of marriages end in divorce ("Marriage and Divorce"). Love and marriage are said to go hand in hand, so why does true love not persist? True, whole-hearted, and long-lasting love is as difficult to find as a black cat in a coal cellar. Loveless marriages are more common than ever, and the divorce rate reflects this. The forms of love seen between these many marriages is often fleeting. Raymond Carver explores these many forms of love, how they create happiness, sadness, and anything in between, and how they contrast from true love, through his characters in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love". Four couples are presented: Mel and Terri, Nick and Laura, Ed and Terri, and, most importantly, an unnamed elderly couple; each couple exhibits a variation on the word love.
Abcarian, Richard. Literature: the Human Experience : Reading and Writing. : Bedford/Saint Martin's, 2012. Print.
Telgen, Diane, ed. "Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury 1953." Novels for Students. Vol. 1. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1997. 138-57. Print.
Deck, Alice A. "Beloved: Overview." Reference Guide to American Literature. Ed. Jim Kamp. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 May 2014
Callahan, John. "Review of Love and Trouble." Short Story Criticism Vol. 5. (Essay date 1974).
Paradowski, Robert J. “Ray Bradbury.” Critical Survey Of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-9. Literary Reference Center. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
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.
The “Love.” Dictionary.com. 25 Feb. 2005 http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=love Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Love Is Not All.” Making Arguments about Literature: A Compact Guide And Anthology. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford.