“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” Dr. Seuss once said. This statement can be used to examine not only modern literature, but also literature of the past. More importantly, it can be applied to the Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, one of the most well known pieces of writing regarding love, to determine its purpose. Moreover, it can also show whether Shakespeare was successful in achieving this purpose.
Love is a universal human emotion explored in many ways through writing. In novels, romance is shown to be a common theme. It is used to show love in ways that readers can sympathize and relate to, but love can also be shown in different ways. There is more to love than romantic feelings for another person. For example, people show immense pride and love for their family, friends, culture, and even themselves.
What is love? There are many ways American Literature has portrayed the idea of love, and how it works. Several pieces of American Literature demonstrate the theme of love; this is shown in Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, “Annabelle Lee”, by Edgar Allan Poe, and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag and Mildred Montag, a married couple, represent what love is not about.
Many literary works have love as a theme. By reading different novels, one receives a glimpse of all the different kinds of love and their purposes. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, love is represented as the sea. By reading this novel, the reader comes to the conclusion that our capability to love deviates with every person we come across. Love is in some ways an art, and it transforms as people transform.
In order to depict many different images of love, William Shakespeare writes about the challenges of love between Romeo and Juliet. The playwright presents several aspects of love, such as unrequited, parental, and romantic love. Shakespeare’s message, while originating in the 1500s, is not unique to themes of love. In fact, this theme resurfaces many times throughout the history of literature. For instance, Zora Neale Hurston visualizes different images of love in her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
"Love is like a pineapple, sweet and undefinable," -Piet Hein. In the common literature Romeo and Juliet, "My Shakespeare", and "Love's Vocabulary," they all share the same objective of attempting to define love. By using paradox, allusion and figuritive language, William Shakespeare, Kate Tempest and Diane Ackerman show how love is undefinable. In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare uses paradox to define love.
The affectionate feeling is what he later describes as “love”. However, Elizabeth describes beauty through her love for her significant other. “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height”
Love is a “feeling of strong or constant affection for a person” (Merriam-Webster). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Henry James’ Washington Square comment on love through two romances. The Scarlet Letter and Washington Square are centered around a heroine, Hester Prynne and Catherine Sloper, respectively. Hawthorne explores the effects of being unable to love publicly by having Hester be publicly shamed of her love and sexual activity.
Edgar is described as the beautiful fertile valley and Heathcliff the former, described as a bleak, hilly, coal country. Additionally, one can see how Cathy is caught in between these two young men and although it’s not said directly she can be seen as the moors. Whereas Edgar is representative of Thrushcross Grange, it is no surprise then that turbulent Wuthering Heights is shown in Heathcliff. Finding inspiration from her life, Emily Brontë makes it easy to see that the setting reflects each character and she thoroughly uses the setting to develop them throughout Wuthering Heights.
Wurthering Heights, however, reverses this ideology and casts a servant as a character essential to major decisions in the story, "The reader of Wuthering Heights is made continually aware of the
Kate Campbell AP Literature Judy Goff 20 February 2018 Wuthering Heights QQN 2 Chapters 12-18 Catherine finally eats, but she is still hysterical about Edgar, and she still believes that she is dying. She speaks of her death, and her childhood on the moors with Heathcliff. Catherine tries to open the window, telling Nelly that she is certain that she can see Wuthering Heights. Edgar finally goes to see Catherine, and is very surprised about the seemingly dangerous condition that she is in, physically.
In Wuthering Heights, one prominent character, Heathcliff, goes through multiple hardships during the evolution of the plot; During this time he performs many actions that are not perceived as good or sane, but in his own mind he has reasons for these actions. This phenomenon presents itself multiple times throughout the novel. In Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, characters experience events that cause distress or sorrow forcing the reader to feel sympathy. Heathcliff is introduced as a person who people will feel sad for in the beginning of the book.
Topic: Marriage in “Jane Eyre” In “Jane Eyre” Charlotte Brontë rejects the traditional role of women subdued by social conceptions and masculine authority by generating an identity to her female character. Thesis: Jane´s personality will bring into being a new kind of marriage based on equality, meanwhile her choice for romantic fulfilment will depend solely on her autonomy and self-government. Introduction Charlotte Brontë´s “Jane Eyre” stands as a model of genuine literature due to the fact that it breaks all conventions and stereotypes and goes beyond the boundaries of common romance in order to obtain love, identity and equality. 1.
Love is one of the most powerful and influential things in the world. It can have a positive impact on the lives of anyone who receives it. A major motif in A Tale of Two Cities is the power of love. More specifically, Dickens expresses the way love has the power to comfort, heal, and redeem. First, love is able to comfort many characters in times of doubt.
Emily Brontë approaches the idea of sickness and death of the characters in her novel Wuthering Heights in a peculiar way. The characters that are ill are usually mentally ill, and their deaths often result from physical ailments derived from mental illness. The drive for revenge and desire for love that reigns among the characters often lands them in stressful situations that cause them to spiral downward into these mental illnesses. Emily Brontë’s emphasis on the motif of sickness and death in Wuthering Height deepens the drama of the plot and constructs more complicated relationships between the characters.
