Theme Essay – Love

Theme Essay – Love
Love is complicated, and not always happy. So many different views of love make it unpredictable and rather hard to classify. After examining many stories and poems throughout this unit I have noticed that love is obsessive, optimistic, and many other things. In several of the pieces of writing a lack of love was expressed, or love for the wrong reasons. Many of these stories ended in death, or heartbreak.
A major component of love is capacity of one’s ability to give or receive love. Obsession tends to result either in newfound love, or a restraining order. One specific short story, The Gun portrays obsession by love very well. Written by Craig Boyko, this was a love between a women and a pistol. She described the gun to be “breathtaking (with) such compactness”; as well she often stated “reasons for owning a gun.” Her love was not subjective to the object itself, but to what it could do in general. The main character fantasized of “blood and brains flying in a graceless arc” and killing her own husband while he slept. It was a disturbing love that the women shared with this weapon, and very strong.
Optimistic love : graceful and hopeful. Christopher Marlowe explores the idea of perfect love in his poem “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”. The speaker writes to his love, asking her to “live with (him) and be (his) love”. It symbolizes romance with it’s caring vocabulary and shows optimism for the speaker and his life. We do not hear from the addressed love, however we can hope that this love blossomed into a long lasting relationship.
“Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfish” is a poem of love between a cat and a goldfish. In children’s stories it is expressed that cat may catch fish with their paws and sometimes eat them; but in this excerpt written by Thomas Grey is about a cat protecting a certain goldfish. The cat resisted temptation of the fish’s “scaly armor’s Tyrian hue” and “fair round face (with) snowy beard”..