Think about it: The Princess Bride showed Westley's love for Buttercup, Inigo's love for his father, and Prince Humperdink's love of power. James Patterson's Maximum Ride series not only had the romantic plot line of Max and Fang's relationship but also centered around the bond between the family of mutants. Oh, and let's not forget the Easter Story, which is one of true, pure, and sacrificial love. Be it love for another person or something as empty as love of power, every good story includes love.It doesn't surprise me that a desperate-in-search-of-love teenager like me would notice this, but it does make me wonder why adult authors put this emotion into their stories. What do authors see that we as readers don't even realize we see?
Deep down, in the caverns of everyone's hearts, we fear being alone. We fear never being cared for like we were for nine months in the womb. For those nine months we hadn't a worry or care, and then we came into reality and realized that a mother's love is he strongest emotion. Then we grew up and realized that our family and friends can love us all they want but it won't compare to the butterflies we get in our stomach when that special someone is around. We know that without love our lives would be pointless. That is why every story needs love; every story needs to have a purpose.
Perhaps we cling to the romance in stories because through reading we can take certain liberties-- like omitting the flaws of a handsome prince to make the perfect man, which we know does not exist. Jonathan Gottschall wrote in The Storytelling Animal that an author sketches the scene but we fill in the details-- we can decide how tall our true lo-- I mean, the character, is and how brave he is and if he, too, is tired of hearing Bruno Mars' "Treasure". We live vicariously through the damsel in distress because we'd like to hope that in reality we'd have enough sense not to prick our finger on a spinning wheel, so we drift off to dreamland and let the Knight in Shinning Armor carry us off into the sunset.Love in stories gives us the missing piece to our lives: why do you think so many housewives flocked to bookstores to get the latest romance novel? Fabio. And all of the adventures he and Mrs.Typical-Housewife could go on in between doing the dishes and vacuuming.
Romance, and other forms of love, keep us motivated throughout our daily lives. An author writes to connect with the reader and inspire him or her, so its only natural that a good story would include the most necessary of all the emotions: Love.
I love how you mentioned the 9 months in the womb theory, that whole paragraph was pretty fascinating and insightful. I was also about to ask if that was fabio on that romance novel cover. Another theory to me though is that not every novel has just love as the central focus, sometimes many novels take on many themes but only some jump out to us. I have read the Perks of Being a Wallflower so many times and at each time in my life a different aspect jumped out at me, when I was a freshman coming into high school Charlie's social life was more prominent to me, when I was dating AJ love showed up, the most recent time I read it his internal struggles and discontentment was what most jumped out at me. Sometimes I believe we as readers choose what the story is about theoretically. I have asked myself why every song and movie and book deals with love as much as they do too, it does overshadow all else in the story world.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you. I believe book authors and movies writer had it built in them to write topics that will Internet his audience. One of the most effective way is the use of romance, which fascinate all of us, especially the female. Think about the Twilight series as an example. A whole lot of its fans are female who are interested in the love triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob; Team Edward or Team Jacob. So the writers and directors uses that component in the book to make a very popular movie series. Romance, though happy or not, is an interest that is built within us. I mean every girl wants a fairy tail right?
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of interesting how love always seems to find its way into stories, even those where it seems unnecessary. I think it's funny that movies like "Cars" include romance. They are personified automobiles, for Pete's sake. Do they REALLY need to fall in love?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think love is always present in stories because stories it's such an important part of our lives. We feel love for our families, our friends, and of course, our love interests. All this love comes with its share of conflict, and conflict makes for great storytelling.
An interesting theory: that all stories are love stories. Test this theory as you read 'different' pieces of literature. The "trueness" or "falseness" of your theory might lead to other surprising and interesting thoughts. You may want to explore this further for your final project.
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