Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2007 April
2005 February
2005 January
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
2004 August
2004 July
2004 June
2004 May
2004 April
2004 March
2004 February
2004 January
2003 December
2003 November
2003 October
2003 September
My Links
My essay: The Immorality of Marriage
The Onion
SelectSmart
Games to test your logic, faith, morality, and philosophical ideas!
Tom Robbins Quotes
Funny Name Analysis
Bushisms
Letters From the Earth by Mark Twain
Why I Am Not A Christian by Bertrand Russell
Life, Liberty, Logic
Wasting My Time
RedTigress's Blog
Jimmytherighteous's Blog
Octo6er's Blog
Nivek's Blog
Magicjoejoe's Blog
Littlemrmahatma's Blog
Kurtmaddox's Blog
Winstonsmith's Blog
Drforbush's Blog
Juniperflux's Blog
Iron Blog Religion!
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
| Love and/or marriage |
| 02.27.05 (7:44 pm) [edit] |
|
A fairy tale-like story is told in the novel [u]Still Life With Woodpecker[/u] that involves a young princess and a frog. The young princess has this golden ball that she always plays with, until one day she drops the ball in a stream and is unable to retrieve it. While she cries over her loss, a frog hops over to her and tells her that he can get the ball for her, if she promises to let him be a part of her life. She hastily agrees and the frog brings her ball back to her. The young princess runs off with her golden ball, forgetting the frog entirely. Then, the frog finds his way into her house and the King is made aware of the promise his young daughter had made and tells her that she must keep her promise. The girl is disgusted by the frog, and eventually she ends up throwing him against a wall. When he splatters against the wall, the frog turns into a handsome prince. And you know how the story goes, they live happily ever after. While many fairy tale analysts have supplied us with plenty of symbolic explanations for stories such as this, there is one notable contrast between the traditional analyses and that evoked by Tom Robbins. Not to give too much of my favorite novel away, [u]Still Life[/u] examines the significance of the golden ball. The ball is very prominent in the beginning of the story, but no mention is made of it after the girl and the frog become acquainted. Though I admittedly missed the link until having it pointed out to me, the ball is symbolic of giving something up for love. It could be said, then, that we must all ultimately give up something- and not just anything, but something significant, something important to us- in order to gain true love. What we must sacrifice for love is security. One of the things most important to us is our sense of security, and it is something we generally guard very carefully. When it comes to love, there can be no real security. Though we always try and make love seem as though it will last, that there is security in a relationship, the nature of love denies the possibility of absolute security. You cannot force love, you cannot make love a definite- there is always the possibility of love disappearing or changing course. It is in this way that marriage is implausible. Marriage attempts to force security in love, going against the very nature of love. Not only does this make the motives of marrying questionable, it also has the potentiality of wreaking havoc on a pure relationship based on true love. Given that love is present in a relationship when a couple chooses to enter into marriage (or any other form of illogical commitment), the implementation of false promises and unsubstantiated oaths taints the essence of the relationship. Making a promise to be in love for any given time, much less forever, is dishonest and illogical- there is no way of predicting how love will change over time. Love, no matter how powerfully entrenched in a relationship, is not a constant, and attempting to make it so is contrary to its nature. Marriage not only taints the experience of a relationship by attempting to force love, but denies the sanctity of love. It is important, however, to distinguish between various meanings and purposes of marriage. Marriage as a legal contract, marriage as a status symbol, marriage to appease religious doctrine, and marriage for the sake of achiveing the "family unit" is different from marriage as a culminating step of a relationship. Not all couples marry for reasons related to love, but when marriage is viewed as part of the natural progression of a relationship is when love becomes part of the picture. My view is that love is (or should be) the highest value in a relationship. Thus, it is with that view of love that I evaluate marriage. And it is in this light that I deem marriage an undesirable distraction from the pursuit of true, real love, at best; and a means of undermining and perhaps ruining love, at worst. Others are certainly free to view marriage in their own terms, but for anyone who truly wants love, and not some watered down version in which security is feigned, marriage is out of the question. |
| 10 Comments |
