St. Columba’s College
Transition Year Programme: English Department
Extended Essay.
My Thoughts on Love.
Iyobosa Bello- Asemota.
Michaelmas Term 2012.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I had a difficult time choosing the subject matter on which my extended essay would be based. On many occasions, I began to work on my essay only to discard it due to my dissatisfaction with the subject matter I chose. I realized that my dissatisfaction stemmed from my lack of interest in the chosen subject matter. If I, the writer, did not enjoy reading my work, who then would? Following that line of reasoning, I sought after a theme that would not only interest me but my readers as well. That is when I decided my theme should be love. After all, as they say, love makes the world go round.
With the problem of deciding a subject matter out of the way, my next challenge was to find a suitable definition for said subject matter. This was an unforeseen challenge because I had never considered that I would not find a suitable definition for ‘love’ in the several dictionaries I looked through. The word ‘love’ as defined by the Longman dictionary means: to have a strong feeling of affection or devotion for someone or something. The free online dictionary also defined it as ‘a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. Yes, these may be textbook definitions of love, but after studying four powerful books with love as their underlying theme, I cannot accept them as all-encompassing, adequate definitions of the four letter word whose conception is as old as time itself.
The books I chose for this essay are, The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane, A Voice in The Wind by Francine Rivers, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (original), and The Phantom of the Opera by Kate McMullan (revised edition). It is from these books that I gained an understanding of the power of love, the crazy things it can do to people, and the crazy things people, in turn, can do for it.
CHAPTER ONE: Love Gives You a Reason to Stay Alive
I am sure some would smirk at that title and think, “Who does not want to live?” but that, dear reader, is not always the case. Some people on present day Earth have reached such a state of despondency and depression that they struggle to find a reason to go on living. Such was the case of the beautiful twins Fabiola and Romulus in the book The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane. From their birth, life had dealt them nothing but hard blows. They were conceived as a result of the rape of their mother, a poor slave girl, by a rising wealthy Roman leader who can be inferred to be Julius Caesar. As if being born into slavery was not bad enough, their master, to ward of bankruptcy, spitefully separated them from each other and their beloved mother at the young age of thirteen. Romulus was sold to the Ludus to be trained as a gladiator, a slave for roman entertainment and Fabiola was sold into prostitution. They both had several near-death experiences and more than their own fair share of sorrows and tribulations in their young lives but they never gave up. The unconditional love they had for each other and their mother was their driving force. They firmly believed that their love for each other would bring them back together again so they just refused to die! They defied death at every turn and fought to stay alive because of that love.
Erik, in The Phantom of the Opera, also had love as a reason to stay alive. However, unlike Fabiola and Romulus who were motivated by a yearning to return to the love they had once known, the love of their mother, Erik was motivated by his search for a love he had never been fortunate (or unfortunate as the case may be) enough to experience. His is a sad tale of a lonely man whose only desire was to love and be loved in return. His search for this love and his hope that he may one day find it is what guides his actions throughout the book. The twins, for all their troubles, had at least experienced some love. Erik, on the other hand, was thrust into a world that held no love for him not due to any fault of his but as a result of circumstances beyond his control. Perhaps had Erik been born in the late 20th century his story might have been different. In the time in which the story was set, the 19th century, people were ruled by fact-less fear, superstition, and religion. People, such as Erik, with deformities of any nature were not treated kindly and even as a little boy he was met with fear and revulsion at every turn. Yet he was undeterred in his pursuit of this love that had proved to be so elusive. To him, it was worth staying alive for.
In A Voice in the Wind, Hadassah did not really have love as her reason to live. She was not even particularly concerned with staying alive in my opinion. Her own life was not a basket of roses either. She was a Jewish slave who lost her family during the capture of Judea by the Roman Empire. She marched thousands of miles on foot from Judea to Rome; a journey most of the captives did not survive considering the harsh conditions and meager rations they were forced to live on by their captors. On arriving at Rome, she was sold into the Valerian household as a maid to Julia, the master’s daughter. While serving at this post, she fell in love with Marcus, the master’s only son. This seemed at first to be a love that was destined to be forever unrequited but as fate would have it Marcus, in time learned to love Hadassah in return but theirs’ was a love doomed to fail not as a result of the fact that she was a slave and he was the master, or even because she was a Jew and he was a Roman, but as a result of the machinations of a spoiled, jealous child, Marcus’ younger sister Julia; who would introduce the only factor that can physically separate two people who truly love each other: death. Despite her sad and unfortunate lot in life, Hadassah was content and did not lose her will to keep on living because she was happy in the love and devotion she had for her God and the love she believed he had for her in return. He was reason enough to keep living no matter how bad things got.
Love gave these people different reasons to stay alive. In the case of Erik, the hope that he may yet find love made him desperate to live and continue his search for it regardless of how dismal life got. For the twins, they were determined to regain the love they had lost and in my opinion, theirs was a pain worse than Erik’s for it is better never to experience love than to have a taste of that great and terrible thing only to have it snatched away from you. Hadassah was content with her lot in life since the blows life dealt her were softened because she was cocooned in her love for her God and His love for her. Love kept all of them alive.
CHAPTER TWO: Love Changes You
It has been proven over and over again that love has the power to change people. It can change your outlook on life, your relationships with others, the way you handle situations, etc. This is the reason are capable of doing “crazy” things for love. While for some, love may be a healing balm, for others it may have adverse effects that could destroy them. Erik is a perfect example of someone who was adversely affected by love. He, among all the other characters, experienced the most change.
Erik was a man who had been deprived of love all his life and saw it as something unattainable. As a result of this, he did something we are all wont to do as humans. His mind developed a severely biased and embellished notion of love that was thoroughly unrealistic. In Erik’s mind, love was completely deified. Due to this false preconception he had of love, he became obsessive, possessive, and jealous when he finally found it. It was unfortunate that when he discovered love he had to experience the pain it could bring. He suffered from unrequited love without an idea of how to deal with it as he had never before experienced it.
He did not deal well with the situation and even kidnapped the woman he loved, who had long since fallen in love with someone else who loved her in return. He was almost driven mad with jealousy and served her with an ultimatum: she was either to choose him over her lover or he would burn down the opera house where she performed, killing everyone in it. She conceded to his demands, saying she would stay with him although she did not want to, because of the feelings she had for her love. Erik recognized that her compliance was out of love, he appreciated and admired it as it was more in tune with his preconceived notion of it. He decided to let her be free to be with the man she loved. He uncharacteristically put her happiness above his own because of the love he had for her and in doing so he learned that love is never selfish.
Erik changed a great deal because he was under the influence of love; a substance more powerful than any drug. He was at first a sad, lonely man that longed for love, then a deranged, psychopathic kidnapper and would-be murderer, and at last, a self-sacrificing, compassionate man touched by love. Sadly, his tale ended with his death. He died, they say, of a “broken heart”.
The twins also experienced some changes because of love, although not as extreme as the changes Erik experienced. Since they were both determined to survive in order to return to the love of their mother, they had to grow up quickly. They could not afford the luxury of carrying on with an idyllic lifestyle as most people their age. In short, they could not continue to be children. Romulus was forced to grow into a battle hardened soldier. He excelled at first in the Ludus because he had hoped that he could kill enough of his opponents to win his freedom and be able to find his mother and sister but alas, this was not to be so. He committed an offence punishable by death and was forced to flee the impeding judgment thereby becoming an enemy of Rome. He joined the army of General Crassus and though on several occasions had close brushes with death, he remained unflinching and undeterred. These are things he never would have been able to do had he not been driven by love. His sister, Fabiola, suffered no less hardship and experienced changes of her own. She changed from an innocent fresh-faced teenager to a world-weary prostitute. She became cunning and learned to use whatever resources she could lay her hands on to get what she wanted most- freedom to search for her mother and brother.
Hadassah experienced the least changes of all the characters; largely due to the fact that the circumstances in which her story was set differed from that of the others. Regardless, Hadassah did not find love to be any easier. She also faced her own challenges in love; as is discussed in the next chapter.
CHAPTER THREE: Love Gives You a Reason to Die
Death is the most terrifying of all human experiences. It causes the cessation of man’s existence on earth, the only environment he is familiar with and in which he has lived from the day of his birth. We all have an intrinsic sense of self-preservation because it goes against human nature to want to die. Yes, it is true we will all die someday but it is normal that most people will do anything to stave off their imminent demise. For someone to seek out death or approach it willingly is an aberration to the norm.
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This saying is true. As I have previously stated, it is not normal for a person to willingly give up their life for anything. It goes against our nature as humans. To die for the something or someone that you love is what I regard as true love. For a person to willingly and happily face death for the object of their affection shows they value this person, thing, or idea above their life; they love the object of their affection more than they love themselves. This degree of love is a beautiful and powerful thing but it, like everything else on this earth, has its downside.
In the case of people who feel this love and devotion for their god, it can result in religious fanaticism. Suicide bombers and terrorists, such as the Boko Haram sect in Nigeria and the more notorious Al Qaeda, that kill in the name of their god or belief do so out of a misplaced sense of devotion and love for what they believe in. They value their love for their god and beliefs above their own life and the lives of others. Men and women who willingly enlist themselves in the army to fight battles for their country even though it may mean certain death for them do so because they love their country and value the good of their country above their own lives. Anyone who will lay down their life willingly and sacrifice themselves for the object of their affection has experienced true love.
This was the kind of love Hadassah experienced in her own story. She was a Christian working in a Roman household. At that time, this was a very dangerous position as the Romans despised Christians. They saw them as weak and deranged. They could not fathom why they were all serene and smiling in the face of death. They could not understand such single-minded devotion. When the Christians were brought before the lions, they made no effort to escape or fight back; they seldom made a sound of protest. The Romans saw this as weakness and were disgusted by it for in Rome, only the strong were able to survive. Another reason for the romans’ hatred of Christians was that they saw their religion as opposing Roman beliefs. The Romans practiced emperor worship and antagonized Christians who refused to defer to their emperor as a god.
Hadassah was confronted by her jealous and spiteful mistress Julia and asked to worship the emperor. When she disagreed, she was sent to die in the arena. Yet she did not falter or love her God any less. She was willing to die for Him to show how deep her love ran. Even more so, her confidence in His love for her. The twins were also unafraid to face death in their quest to return to their mother’s love by their exploits already scripted in the previous chapter.
On the other hand, the love Erik experienced was a dark and twisted one tainted by selfishness and bordering on obsession. As opposed to the other characters who would not have minded laying their lives down for the sake of love, Erik would not have minded laying down the lives of others in his selfish bid to attain his deeply desired love. In my opinion, his love for himself and his belief that he deserved to be loved in return by the object of his affection supersedes any emotion or semblance of love he might have felt towards her. This is the same selfish idea of love that governs and guides every person that kills in the name of the thing they love. In their minds, they have the justification they need to guiltlessly commit all manner of heinous crimes due to a misguided sense of duty and devotion to the object of their affection.
Conclusion
Having spent so much time writing an essay with its focus on love, I finally feel as though I now have a better grasp on what it truly means to love something or someone. I now understand what motivates people to do things onlookers would regard as irrational, things that they normally would not have the strength or courage to do. I also understand why some would look upon the notion of love or being in love with disdain or would regard rash acts born of this love, to be foolish. While I do not hope to justify the evil acts people do in the name of love, regardless of whatever form it manifests in, I must admit that love’s influence is as wide and as deep as any ocean.
Bibliography.
A Voice In The Wind by Francine Rivers
The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Phantom of the Opera by Katie McMullan
The Dictionary: Longman Contemporary English,
The free online dictionary ( www.thefreeonlinedictionary.com )
The Bible: New International Version (NIV)
Google ( www.google.com )