Mary and O'Neil Is about the Redemptive Power of Love - Essay Example

‘Mary and O’Neil’ is About the Redemptive Power of Love Introduction ‘Mary and O’Neil’ is a debut novel by Justin Cronin and it first appeared before its readers in the year 2002. The novel is presented in fragmented stories involving two of the very passionate and emotionally susceptible teachers who found their world with a new meaning in each other where they could gather strength to make alive their bygone desires and come alive with newer hopes and promises. The novel is a celebration of unconventionality and certain bizarre thoughts in very mundane lives along with the redemptive power of love.

Celebration of Redemptive Power of Love in Mary and O’ Neil The theme of love posits itself at a very poignant place in the collection of stories that appear collectively as a novel. The eight stories include ‘Last of the Leaves’; ‘Orphans’; ‘Lightness’; ‘Groom’; ‘Mammals’; ‘Ghosts of Winter’; ‘Life By moonlight’ and ‘A Gathering of Shades’. At the outset of the novel, it becomes quite evident that both the characters of the novel have suffered tremendous loss in their personal fronts which had been very tough for them to overcome.

At the same time they realised that all their experiences in the prior lives which were gloomy and darken by myriad other troubles of life are cured by their compassion and togetherness which they celebrate after meeting in the high school of Philadelphia where they came to teach. Love works as a healer and as a medicine throughout the novel performing the work of balm to sooth the aching hearts. At the beginning of the novel, we come across Mary Olson and O’Neil Burke whose first quarter of life is eclipsed with sudden and a very mysterious death of O’Neil’s parents along with the hasty decision to end Mary’s pregnancy.

The relentless struggle of O’Neil’s sister with disease and a grossly wrong and troubled marriage has an evident foreboding feeling that eclipse the novel gradually at the beginning. But when these two troubled and battered souls come into each other’s mentorship, they were able to grace and illuminate moments in their lives with the power of love. Love acted as a therapy, a medicine and a ray of hope emitting lots of positive vibes. In the chapter bearing the title, ‘Last of the Leaves’, there are reflections where a man is compelled to choose something which is not his desire of heart at the beginning but might develop a sudden affinity towards it.

The moment appeared before Arthur, the protagonist of the story as the moment of magic, a self discovery and redemption, “By the end of the week twenty-six-year-old Arthur was meeting his father’s client and scraping the mud from their boots off the carpet that he liked it, all of it; the thousand choices of his life suddenly included the choice not to choose , and within a month he had cancelled his plans to clerk for a federal circuit judge in Manhattan and was studying like mad for the bar” (Cronin, J.

“Mary and O'Neil: A Novel in Stories”, Pg 9) Love and its redemptive power do not captivate itself into the magic of the amorous love. Love has transcended the barriers of amorous love in this context and it has achieved a true impeccable genuine feeling where we find two siblings in the story “A Gathering of Shades”, try to support each other thorough the magical treatment of love supporting each other in joy and pain and sustaining through the pangs of living and dying. The stories in the novel, “Mary and O’Neil” by Justin Cronin are set between the period which starts from 1979 and ends in the recent past.

All the stories in the novel are linked at a plane. A common paradigm where all the characters get enough space to ovulate their emotions and in their desolation of hearts, they found each other and above all, in each other they found love. The stories are woven like subaltern conscience operating and embracing the novel at a greater length. The story of Miriam and Kay and their struggle through compassion and love to overcome the pain of breast cancer, Kay’s discovery to the fact of her husband’s infidelity and Mary’s early abortion are all related at a distant realm and are connected with the rediscovering power of love.

The disturbed relation of Kay and Miriam is again paralleled with the relationship of Mary with her mother which she overcomes with the magic of love when later in her life she discovers its power and incorporates in her and Norah’s life skilfully. Similarly, Arthur’s feeling for Dora has an emotional lineage with the feeling of O’Neil’s brief emotional encounter with Patrice in the chapter “Orphans”. Conclusion The redemptive power of love does not focus only on the couple Mary and O’Neil in the novel.

It transcends the barrier of mundane love, shared between couples, and shows the power it has over the entire humanity. No relation is out of its magic. The power of love is omnipotent. Justin Cronin is an excellent writer. He has a great understanding of human complexities and can comprehend the minds of the human beings quite well. The mundane world around appeals him with great intensity and enables to frame such great tales from life and about life. Reference Cronin, Justin Mary and O'Neil: A Novel in Stories Dial Press Trade Paperback, 2002. Pg 9.