What Distinguish Love from other Feelings - Term Paper Example

Order: 432670 Topic: Love Outline: Love is one of the strangest phenomenons of human nature. It engulfs the life of an individual male or female, at some stage of life and leaves deep, unforgettable imprint. True love goes on multiplying, and it is love for the sake of love only. It doesn’t even expect to be loved back. But passion diminishes with the passage of time. A passionate individual is likely to commit grave errors in life. Violence and murder relate to the domain of passion and true love is submissive and soft. To such an individual, love is like the bird with colorful wings, which remains in the cage called heart. That bird’s flight is without intermission and it moves there with tantalizing speed to make the lover a bard! The love-hate drama of Frankenstein is filled with passion and revenge. This story by Merry Shelly depicts how the labor love of Dr. Victor results in the creation of a monster, and leads to several tragedies, due to non-fulfillment of its love! It is the story of love, passion, frustration and ultimately tragedy! Thesis: In Frankenstein the monster seeks love in several different ways because all humans need love and acceptance. Essay: Let us try to understand the timelessness of love through this metaphor—the full moon is shining in the sky. It’s full moon day. Seeing the beauty of the moon, a tempest rises in the ocean beneath. The ocean, in an effort to reach the moon, sends the roaring waves one after another. But alas! Can the waves reach the moon howsoever big they may be? Can the moon ever reach out to Planet Earth whatever is the intensity of the wish! These are impossible conditions. Yet the eternal struggle for fulfillment of love goes on between the ocean and the moon. Watch the scene in a sea-shore. The waves continue their efforts with the never-ending roar, they lash at the shore in frustration and the moon serenely gazes at the ocean. Frankenstein by Merry Shelly is a novel, in which the characters challenge their frustrated love and ambitions. The theme of love explained in the novel, stands the test of the present day materialistic civilization, what if it is deeply impacted by industrialization and internet revolution. The human hearts are the same and they respond to love. When denied, they generally react in frustration and seek revenge. When Victor Frankenstein creates a monster, he challenges the Kingdom of God, which is essentially filled with love. In relationship, he is the ‘parent’ to the monster, but he fails to own the parental responsibilities. The monster is destination-less and directionless and it does not know why it has arrived in this world. With no one to guide him what to do and what not to do, with no emotions of love in the heart, soon it develops the revengeful attitude and goes on the killing-spree. Have a look at the newspapers—one can read the stories of love that result in revengeful attacks which are often fatal! Love when fructifies, is twice-blessed. It blesses the giver and the receiver. The opposite is also true as would be seen in Frankenstein. Any encounter of the monster with the humankind ends in chaos and frustration. Having denied love by its creator, it looks for solace elsewhere, only to be disappointed at every stage. This un-fructified love proves to be twice-cursed! By evading the monster and running to save his own life, Frankenstein ruins his life as well and that of the monster. Viewed from another angle, Frankenstein is madly in love with his scientific experiments. So much so, that he is unaware of their outcomes and consequences. They say, ‘love is blind.’ So is the case with Frankenstein as for his love for science. Two individuals are involved in the situation in Frankenstein—the creator and the created! In the normal circumstance both should have loved each other. But a strange situation develops-- The creator does not exactly know the purpose of his creation and so does the created one! The created one, laments, “Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible. I sickened as I read. ‘Hateful day when I received life’”! (126). So, love denied from day one—what can the monster do, except develop the revengeful attitude? Who is the real monster in Frankenstein? Whether it is Victor who ran away from the ‘parental’ responsibilities or the monster that simply expresses the desire for a mate? The monster knows that he is such a horrid creation that he will never be loved, though he makes attempts to discover love several times, from several ends. Every time, he faces rejection and disappointment. Frankenstein too seeks happiness through love, but he also suffers tragic losses. He is aware of the plight of the monster, and begins to make a female monster, to provide companionship to his first creation, but gives up the experiments when he is halfway through it, and destroys it and dumps the remains in a lake. Every great work by any author contains the theme of love in one form or the other. Othello by William Shakespeare is the story of a noble black Arab General, who marries a young daughter of a white senator, when he falls in love with her. Shakespeare transcends the concepts of racism that is very much prevalent during that time and he shows how one can truly love a person. But that is not the end of the story. Society creates controversies out of such marriages, which result in turmoil in the society. Othello is a tragedy about human nature and relationships. One critic has written that the love of Othello and Desdemona is like the love of Adam and Eve before and after the fall (Barthelemy, Introduction Critical Essays 12). This is correct because Othello commits a grave act out of sheer jealousy and insecurity that he feels for self. Later he learns from his errors and regrets his actions but it is too late. The grave acts of Othello can be compared to the mindless act of Victor in creating the monster, and once the monster stands alive in front of him, insecurity seizes him and he runs for his life. Romeo and Juliet is a great love story by William Shakespeare. Its focus is on romantic love. Love has been depicted as an overpowering force that beats all other loyalties and emotions. In this play love is mostly brutal, powerful emotion and the individuals involved in this game of love challenge the world and at times that leads to a situation where they are pitted against themselves. Like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the themes of death and violence are depicted in Romeo and Juliet. Passion, which is the further extension of the concept of love, relates to hate as well. The inevitable connection between hate, violence and death has been depicted in both the literary works. Love and hate can completely overwhelm an individual. With no chances of getting his love aspirations fulfilled, Monster took to hate and went on a killing spree. In desperation, he is seeking the desperate remedies. In Act 3, there is a comparable situation faced by the monster in Frankenstein. After Capulet decides that Juliet will marry Paris, Juliet says, “If all else fail, myself have power to die” (3.5.242). The tragic choice of ending one’s life is the highest tribute to the expression of love that one can make. That is the final frontier of freedom in love. Such individuals (monster included) are willing to preserve the cause of love, through death. In the ordinary parlance, one may see it as the destruction of happiness. But for the true-lover, self-destruction is comparable to the ultimate commitment that one can do in life—emancipation! It is the same old story throughout the Ages—it is between him and her!—and the tragic circumstances the lovers have to encounter in one way or the other! In the poem by Thomas Campbell, “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” Lord Ullin does not approve of his daughter’s choice and threatens to kill her lover. The two lovers escape, hotly pursued by her father’s horsemen, and the lovers reach a lake, decide to cross it in the most unfavorable weather conditions, as it is a stormy night. Tragedy is waiting in the wings to happen and the lovers die! The poet describes it thus: “‘Twas vain: the loud waves lash’d the shore, Return or aid preventing: The waters wild went o’er his child, And he was left lamenting.”(Lord Ullin’s…) Conclusion: Everybody needs love and acceptance. Love is like fresh honey. It keeps millions of hopes of life alive! It is not easy to bear and forget the pangs of love. Frustration in love often leads to tragic consequences. Millions of pages have been written on the subject of love. Yet, each heart has its own definition of love and each lover sees a new horizon of love! ******* Works Cited: Barthelemy, Anthony G. "Introduction" Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Othello. Ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy Pub. Macmillan New York, NY 1994. (page 1-19) Lord Ullins Daughter by Thomas Campbell www.poemhunter.com/poem/lord-ullin-s-daughter/ - Cached - Similar Retrieved on April 22, 2010 Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Routledge, 1988 Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet SHELLEY, Mary Wollstonecraft (1797-1851)]. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones, 1818. Read More