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The novel, Mother Tongue, is a great example of the misuse of love today. The author, Demetria Martinez, tells the tale of a woman that falls in love with a Salvadoreño refugee. José Luis is a soldier in the Salvadorian army that flees to the United States where he begins a love affair with a young woman, Mary. From my prospective, the emotions they shared were not of love, but rather emotions that arose from false pretenses. Like so many relation-ships in our society today, the word love is taken for granted. Relationships are embarked upon without consideration of the repercussions. Divorce rates are a great example how relationships are not being started for the right reasons. Love is abused because of humans' innate desire to love, uncontrollable feeling to search for it, and be loved despite their failure to develop the necessary foundations for true love.
The yearning for affection is one of life's greatest mysteries. This longing has led to many misconceptions of love. The greatest factor in the delusion of love is lust; often the emotions that arise from eroticism are mistaken for the true euphoric experience that is true love. Another factor that contributes to false love is loneliness, which is a feeling that all people know and avoid tremendously. As in Mary's case, her judgement was clouded by her misinterpretation of what she believed to be love. Mary was unable to realize that what appeared to be love was not truly love, " I courted disaster, set out to love a man I knew full well would go away." (Pg. 27) The combination of lust, loneliness, and Mary's undying need for love that created a rude awakening for her.
Mankind's intense yearning for love leads him to what seems to be an unending search for it. Man spends too much time searching for love; but not fully understanding its purpose. Love is a gift from one person to another, and thus it has the ability to posses many different meanings. Often, in search of love people fall into the trap of trying to alter love to suit personal fantasies of what it should be. Frequently spending their time convincing themselves of what they can change about the other, instead of how they can work to accept them. "I was one of those women whose fate is to take a war out of a man, or at least imagine she is doing so." (pg.4) Clearly Mary was setting herself up for failure but did nothing to stop the negative outcome. The first step in finding love is acceptance of oneself, then learning how to accept someone else. Trying to force this process is an inevitable sign of disaster.
Rushing a process that is as delicate as love is not meant to be. There must be a real foundation in a relationship for it to proceed to the next level. Sometimes, if a relationship is rushed it could be extremely overwhelming and so it cannot make the people in it happy. Flaws are overlooked because people are in love with the idea of being in love, the idea that another would change for the sake of the relationship. Similarly, one attribute could overshadow many faults that mold the other person into something that they are not, as in the case of Mary. Overlooking many small imperfections may be the cause of a relationship's failure, because one quality cannot make it work. It is this illusion that makes someone think that they are in control of their relationship, when in reality they are not.
Love is abused because of humans' desire to control what is not given to them to control. Many say it is better have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. This may have been the way Mary regarded her relationship with José Luís. Thinking through my life and my experiences with love or the lack thereof causes many unanswerable questions to arise. Love is an enigma that causes many individuals heartache, but for those very few it completes their lives. I myself have not found "love", and truthfully the search for it has at some points left me in a state of dissolution. The hope though is not lost. Like Maria, in the rush to find love, over looking the flaws of a person has left feeling of regret. I know now that real love it was not, the search for it still draws me in and I know love still waits, somewhere.
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Bibliography:
Mother Tongue by Demetria Martinez
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