The way a person expresses his or her love to another person should not bother other people. In the article “I Just Called to Say I Love you” by Jonathan Franzen he clearly states that he hates hearing other people saying the words I love you to another person. He believes that the privacy of others should be kept to themselves and their personal feelings should not be said out loud in public places. Although this may be true there are also other perspectives of how one can handle situations like of expressing feelings when they occur.
Not only is the expression I love you the only way of expressing ones feelings for another but there are many other forms of love that are expressed in public places that really should not matter to others if they are happening. People should have the right to express their feelings without others getting offended or caring at all for that matter. Jonathan Franzen says that “Privacy to me is not about keeping my personal life hidden from other people. It’s about sparing me from the intrusion of other peoples personal lives” (Franzen 367).
Jonathan does not fear that privacy is about others knowing things about his life but rather he doesn’t care to know about other people’s lives. Franzen gets bothered to hear people utter the words I love you to other people over the phone. Knowing that fact one can infer that he must dislike people kissing in public, people on Facebook posting statuses about how much they love their significant other and any other kind of public displays of affection. Although who is to say that the person who is being told I love you is not having a bad day and needs to hear those words.
Or that the person may be seriously ill and saying the words I love you encourages that person. One can never know what those people’s situations may be, much less the reasons why they feel so strongly to say the words I love you in public. Franzen later in his article goes to talking about his own experience of 9/11. Franzen has a good style here of writing because his transitions are very powerful, his words are very bold and he keeps the article interesting at all times. Franzen does not seem to realize the high impact that 9/11 had on all the people around him.
He says that partly it was because he did not have a TV. Although this is a valid reason, another part of why he did not realize the high impact was because he himself was not impacted because he does not have a very high compassion for others. As Franzen said after the 9/11 incident it became easier for people to say I love you because people realized that one never knows what tomorrow will bring. For this reason Franzen should understand that saying I love you should never be a problem no matter where one is.
Franzen continues in his article talking about his own personal life and about mother and fathers relationship. He reads to us two letters that his parents right to each other and this is a good mechanism because we see through these passages the reasoning behind his opinions. Franzen’s and his father share many of the same characteristics, they are both serious and reserved. His mother on the other hand loved to say the words I love you to Franzen because she had many feelings for her son inside that she wanted to express to him.
Franzen tell us that his mother complained that Franzen’s father never said the words I love you to her. Although Franzen sees that through their letter his father did write to her how much he loved her but in person he was not good at showing his emotions. We see that Franzen does not appreciate when others say I love you out loud because he is overcome by thinking the way his dad thought. In his final article Franzen says “The part of me that’s angered by cellular intrusions comes from my father. The part of me that love my blackberry and wants to lighten up and join the world comes from my mother” (Franzen 375).
This is a great example of how we see the true feelings of Franzen and how in reality he does not hate others for saying the words I love you but in fact he has forced himself to believe it is wrong because of his dad. At the end of the article Franzen admits that if his mother was still alive then he too would be in an airport telling his mother that he loves her. This is a great shift because the author leads us to believe one thing but then he truly actually believes another. Franzen does a great job connecting with his audience because he refers to things that happen now a day quite often and it is relatable.
His style is appropriate it is easy to understand and it is intriguing, because it is a topic that most of us deal with in our lives. At first telling his audience that he hates people that say I love you in public but in the end saying that he too would say that to his mother we see that he actually plays a little of both sided of the argument. We get too see both of the perspectives and we are free to make our own choice. In the end his argument is agreeable people should be respectful of others around them but at the same time showing affection towards your loved ones should always be expressed even if it is in public.
