Theme Of Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Have you ever fallen in love with someone who has no interest in you and doesn’t love you back? Did that person suddenly start loving you out of nowhere? In A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, Helena’s hunger for love brings out a desperate side in her and takes her through interesting adventures with love. One can infer that Helena is hurt by love when she reacts to love in a foolish manner and remains skeptical about it even at the end of the play. The strong effects of love makes Helena a bit foolish and blind in the ways she reacts to it. In scene one of act one, the readers learn that Helena still loves Demetrius even though he loves her friend, Hermia, now. When Helena is first introduced, she demonstrates her jealousy and insecurities by asking Hermia for some of her beauty to win Demetrius back. Hermia and Lysander inform her that they are running away, and that Helena will be able to have Demetrius since he will never see Hermia again. Once Hermia and Lysander leave, Helena gives her soliloquy which reflects the mood of anger and jealousy; she also talks about how she’s going to tell Demetrius the two lover’s plans, so that Demetrius will love her again. At the end of her soliloquy, she says, “But herein mean I to enrich my pain,/to have his sight thither and back again” (1.1.250-251). Helena is saying that she wants to see Demetrius when he comes back after he continuously mistreats her. This shows that she is completely foolish and lacks