The Romance of Tristan and Iseult - Admission/Application Essay Example

Basically, the premise of the story is about Tristan and Iseult falling passionately in love with each other after mistakenly sharing a love potion intended for Iseult and her husband Mark. The story is based on the Authority legend as it portrays the character of Iseult as one that is from Ireland and Tristan from Cornwall which is both believed to have a Celtic origin. This is heavily emphasized all throughout the story as we all know that Celtics are a diverse group of tribal societies in the Iron Age and the Roman era that was known to practice warrior aristocracy. This explains why though there has already been a lot of versions of this story, it remains consistently strong from the start where Tristan tries to prove his prowess at war to get closer to Iseult, to the point when the story reaches a climax when Iseult and Tristan fight for their illicit affair that is slowly being discovered and even at the end, where it all ends the same way, Tristan and Iseult are dying for their love for one other.

Here we can see that the revolving theme of the story is tormented love as it shows that no matter how pure and sacred love may be, one will surely go through different adventures that will challenge loyalty, strength, and the practice of certain principles. This was shown as Tristan and Iseult’s love definitely was a mistake as Iseult was already married to King Mark, which makes their love forbidden. However, for them to fight for their love, it will need them to go beyond one’s comfort zone even it if means suffering or death.

The context of the story also showed the whole theme of the story which is tormented love as the technique used when it comes to language is one that is formal and deep that brings the feelings of despair and hopefulness, anger and compassion, knowledge of what is right and the longing to find pure joy altogether.

A lot about the foretelling of the story that turned it into a classic Western literary work has a lot of influence from how the author developed its characters as well. First of all, Tristan is actually an orphaned man, who in any Celtic origin would have no other resort but to devote oneself to war. As the character of Tristan is being unmasked, he started as someone who is actually trying to win the Fair of his uncle King Mark. However, his character changes when he drinks the love potion and falls in love with Iseult which led him to sacrifice his relationship with his uncle Mark and all whose principle would be to abide by loyalty and abhor adultery. This abrupt turn of character is a kind of literary style used to portray the strength of love and at the same time how destructive it can be, this being the premise of the whole story. This was also supported by inserting other styles such as the use of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, and political systems as a tone that in a way uncovers every step a certain character takes. A clear demonstration of the tone that mixes political tension and at the same time resentment would be when Mark already sights certain proofs of Tristan and Iseult’s guilt and resolves to punish them. However, he worries that this event would cause the endangerment of their fragile kingdom as Tristan was one of his great warriors and trusted friends.