Lanao 2
Natalia Lanao
Professor Smathers
ENC1102
28 June 2019
Literary Analysis Argumentative Essay
Love is often the driving force in relationships of any kind from friendship, familiar bonds, and romantic pairings. The inexperienced would not know that there does exist a pure strong love that arguably is stronger than all other forms of love and that is agape, self-less love. All other forms of love are rooted in selfish desires or shallow understandings of love. Agape surpasses all other forms of love because it is the purest and most selfless love.
Within the short stories given, the different perspectives of love are shown and represented through the developing scenes, with the characters finding their own interpretations, which ultimately impacts their actions. In the story, “The Love of My Life” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, the two main characters grapple with an unexpected situation that tests not only their love, but their very ideals on human life and children. With a deceiving name such as “The Love of My Life”, one can imagine the short story to be a tale of a powerful and everlasting love that withstands time, however, it’s quite the opposite. In fact, the story written by Boyle gives a narrative on the intense yet dwindling relationship of the main protagonists, China and Jeremy who through go through the misfortune of teen pregnancy and eventually the crime of infanticide. In the story, “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, a mother attempts to come to terms with and accept who she is and navigate her relationship with her two daughters. In both stories, “agape”, or selfless love, plays a significant role, or lack of, in how the characters and plot evolves.
Although selfless love wasn’t a theme in this story, it could be argued that had it been the type of love China and Jeremy shared, then the series of tragic events wouldn’t have ever occurred. When Jeremey says “ (Boyle ). When they tell each other that they love each other it is in a way that young lovers in the first stages of love do, ludus the kind of love that fades with time. Their childlike love was not intended to withstand the slings and arrows of conflict. Their love ludus was flimsy at best, Jeremy and China naively believed their love was unbreakable when it turned out it was far from being that. In the story “The love of my life “ Jeremy and China being young teenage lovers also have a sexual based love called eros as shown by the fact that “they’d been having sex ever since they started going together at the end of their junior year” (Boyle). Eros based love is erotic in nature that flames out and burns quickly. Eros love does not have the strength that agape love does and that is shown by how quickly Jeremy and China’s love collapses. Once they start face some actual adversity at the pregnancy of China their love is shown to be fickle they bicker and disagree which would not happen with the self-less kind of love agape. Their interpretation of deep love was false as pro...
