Good BEW essay.Motivations of Love

ESSAY > Good BEW essay.Motivations of Love

University of California, Santa Barbara ENGL 104A The concept of love is a cultural notion which can vary from each culture to another. Love is generally defined as a deep or intense feeling of affection towards another human being. During this quarter we read two novels which describe the idea of love in two different cultures. In Beloved by Toni M ...[Show More]

University of California, Santa Barbara
ENGL 104A
The concept of love is a cultural notion which can vary from each culture to another.

Love is generally defined as a deep or intense feeling of affection towards another human being.

During this quarter we read two novels which describe the idea of love in two different cultures.

In Beloved by Toni Morrison she depicts the concept of love in an African American family

located in Cincinnati dealing with the realities of slavery. Morrison presents this family’s views

of love and how love causes people to take desperate measure in order to protect their love.

Mohsin Hamid depicts love in a Middle Eastern family living in a war-torn country in Exit West.

Hamid describes the life of a couple who are in love and decide to leave their country looking for

a better life. Love is a powerful motivator in both of these novels, causing the characters in each

novel to make life-altering decisions.

Toni Morrison depicts love in many ways in her novel Beloved. The most vivid examples

are when love is shown as a motivator, pushing the characters to take risks and commit drastic

acts. One example is when the main character Sethe decides it is time to run away from her

owner’s plantation in Kentucky. When she flees, she is pregnant with her daughter Denver. On

her journey to reconnect with the rest of her family she gives birth to her daughter. “A thin and

whipping snow very like the picture her mother had painted as she described the circumstances

of Denver’s birth in canoe straddled by a white girl for whom she was named” (Morrison 35).

Sethe risks everything to return to the family she loves and to find a safe place to raise her

daughter. Love is a driving force behind Sethe’s journey. While she is on her way to Cincinnati,

love is what keeps her going and it does not let her give up. Love guides her and helps her

mentally to get her newborn daughter to a safer environment. Another example of how Morrison

illustrates how love is an altering factor in a character’s life is when Sethe’s oldest daughter