Preview

Comparative Analysis: “the Concept of Love as a Destructive Force in Anna Karenina and One Hundred Years of Solitude, and to What Extent It Is Depicted in Each Novel.�? Essay Example

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
747 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Comparative Analysis: “the Concept of Love as a Destructive Force in Anna Karenina and One Hundred Years of Solitude, and to What Extent It Is Depicted in Each Novel.�? Essay Example
World Literature Essay 1 Comparative analysis: “The concept of love as a destructive force in Anna Karenina and One Hundred Years of Solitude, and to what extent it is depicted in each novel.” Shahla Sayeed June 16 2009 {draw:rect} In Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, we are presented with complex life stories immersed with emotional situations which allow readers to interpret or reflect upon, unraveling the unique relationships between the characters involved in them, in addition to the opinions they generate in the societies of their respective settings. It is clear that these two phenomenal pieces of literature are in a way isolated from each other in the sense of realism and overall literary style, but the elements which they have in common are especially important, because they allow us to make meaningful generalizations in certain aspects of life. In the case of the two chosen novels, the concept of romantic love and relationships are essential to consider, not only because they are so profound, but also because of the many implicit and explicit tools the authors use to stylize them in their work, but when romantic love is described more as a potentially destructive force, readers are presented with themes which are far more significant and re-occurring in our world than the more fictitious (and positive) types of relationships. There is no better way to understand the true nature of a relationship unless the readers are given an insight of the characters’ motives and inner conflicts, and this ‘insight’ is presented to us differently in each of the novels. In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy takes readers on a journey through the minds of different principal characters, not through a direct first-person point of view, but rather a deeper, third-person omniscience, depending on the situation and the characters involved. This way, there is a clearer view of what characters really perceive as

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The annotated bibliography of Kate Chopin’s works has only recently reached its heightened acceptance after her death. The world had a negative and condemning view of some of her short stories and essays. Kate had a prolific writing style that universally described the inner selves of men, women, and human relationships. Blatant honesty and true individualism were areas not readily to be accepted.…

    • 1204 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Lais of Marie de France offers an inquisitive perspective on the nature of love and the sacrifices one must make in relationships and marriage. While reading, I encountered many examples of a man and woman in love who must suffer for one another. This collection of narratives contains characters in relationships in which each partner suffers equally for one another and characters in which one partner sacrifices more than the other.…

    • 372 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Lais of Marie de France are a collection of short stories that depict situations where love arises. The author presents love as a complex emotion and demonizes it and praises it in certain instances. She is not always in favor of love as is described by the outcomes by some of the lovers in the story, such as when they either end up dead in the end or banished because of their love. The author presents this notion of love because she believes it is not always justified to love someone. In the book, two distinct types of love are shown. There is selfless love and selfish love which are compared throughout the multiple stories in The Lais of Marie de France. By comparing the two distinct types of love, a universal truth about love can be derived to explain when love is and is not justified.…

    • 1342 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “‘All happy families are alike, all unhappy families are unhappy in its own way’ is the first line of Anna Karenina and, like any self respecting concierge, I am not supposed to have read it … for although common people may be sensitive to great works though they do not read them, literature, in the presence, cannot aspire to the lofty…

    • 1097 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Year of Wonders Study Notes

    • 3530 Words
    • 15 Pages

    • Anna at being widowed and helpless, “When you’re a widow at eighteen, you grow used to those looks and hard towards the men who give them.”…

    • 3530 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    At a young age, Oscar was what nowadays you may call a “player”, he had girls left and right and at times couldn’t even decide which one he wanted more. He was “one of those preschool loverboys who was always trying to kiss the girls, always coming up behind them during a merengue and giving them the pelvic pump” (p.11). However, one day Oscar lost his touch; it could have been the Fuku, the Dominican family curse, but that did not matter because Oscar was no longer the “player” he used to be. He languished in his room playing video games, eating and becoming larger and writing his fiction novels. There was no love, no social life and the only females he would speak to on a daily basis were his mother and sister. The dilemma was the moment Oscar would come into contact with another girl, he would fall head over heels “in love”. He would dream about her day and night admiring every perfect quality and flaw she had, Oscar became obsessive. But, Oscar was severely depressed, he even tried to kill himself when the girl he loved did not love him back. When one is not exposed to love one loses all their self worth. Oscar may have had other issues that caused his depression, but the force of love is so strong and so crucial for the survival of a human being that without it one can almost wither away, as Oscar did.…

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is with such a unique, magical realism story that Gabriel García Márquez is able subtly convey themes involving the foils of mankind to his audience. His story invites the reader to search for those deeper aspects within the text and try applying them to their own lives. Whether they discover that they should strive to be more compassionate, avoid being stereotypically superficial individuals, or do not read anything into the writing, the audience will undoubtedly enjoy Márquez’s superb skills as one of the best storytellers of the twentieth…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lais of Marie de France

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Marie begins her collection of lais with the story of Guigemar, a noble knight who is cursed with the task of finding true love to heal a physical injury. This lay introduces two types of love: selfish and selfless. Selfish love is not courtly love. It lacks devotion and true loyalty. It lacks suffering and self-denial. Marie de France portrays this kind of love in the old husband of the woman whom Guigemar loves. The man locks his wife away in an enclosure guarded by a castrated man. By doing this, the husband shows a mean, limited devotion to his wife; perhaps even worse, he limits her ability to experience true love. This kind of love does not last; in fact, the husband is cuckolded when his wife has a year-long affair with Guigemar. He is made a fool, the dupe of love.…

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The film Enduring Love deals with a number of different characters and their lives after participating in a traumatic event with each other. In this paper I will defend the thesis that the title “Enduring Love” is misleading; not only is it not love, but it is also not enduring. The tragic event that the characters share together transformed their lives into something that cannot be defined as “enduring love”. In order to defend this thesis Section One will define key terms such as love, enduring, transformation, and tragic. Section Two will offer examples from the film that will defend my thesis. Section three will answer potential objections to my thesis. Finally the conclusion will summarize what the paper has proven.…

    • 968 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Year of Wonders

    • 3854 Words
    • 16 Pages

    We examined the burgeoning relationship with George which is cut short by his illness. We see Anna’s passion for her children (challenging God’s edict that none be placed before him) and her desire to be with a man again. We learn a lot about the lives of women in puritanical society in this chapter, and how Anna is already different from them.…

    • 3854 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    ‘It’s Tolstoy by the way; I say as I open, the open door. He turns around. What? Shut up, I tell myself. Shut up the writer of Anna Karenina. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was revolutionary who was stabbed with a pickaxe in Mexico 1939. But I understand how the T thing could confuse you. He looks at me, his eyes narrowing. William Troubal doesn’t like to be put in this place.…

    • 987 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Literary Analysis Essay

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages

    This worksheet must be TYPED. Bring your completed worksheet (along with the O’Connor short stories) to class with you on Tuesday 11/27. Note: Page 1 of this outline provides a sample outline of the thesis statement and ONE paragraph from the online sample Literary Analysis Essay.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Kate Chopin tackles complex issues involved in the interplay of female independence, love, and marriage through her brief but effective characterization of the supposedly widowed Louise Mallard in her last hour of her life. After discovering that her husband has died in a train accident, Mrs. Mallard faces conflicting emotions of grief at her husband’s death and exultation at the prospects for freedom in the remainder of her life. The latter emotion eventually takes precedence in her thoughts. As with many successful short stories, however, the story does not end peacefully at this point but instead creates a climactic twist. The reversal—the revelation that her husband did not die after all, shatters Louise’s vision of her new life and ironically creates a tragic ending out of what initially appeared to be a fortuitous turn events.…

    • 389 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Literary Analysis Essay

    • 1434 Words
    • 6 Pages

    When the drama attains a characterization which makes the play a revelation of human conduct and dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we reach dramatic literature. – George P. Baker.…

    • 1434 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Both Anton Chekhov and Joyce Oates chose to tell the story using a third-person narrator. This is one of the most important aspects of the characterization because if other characters were allowed to appear more within either story, the reader would have more than likely had a different view of their affair. For example, if Oates had allowed the reader to know Anna's husband more intimately and definitely if the reader could read his thoughts, we may have seen the affair as dirty. We only see him trying to make love to her in an almost impersonally way. They never really cominicate, and his love for her is never shown with in the story, so the reader has no real reason to sympathize with him. Instead, Anna's guilt seems sufficient, and her desire to be else where allows the reader to feels sorry for her and the fact that this love is what she perceives as her fate, we give her the sympathy and no longer see this affair as necessarily wrong.…

    • 761 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays