Rita Giunta
Professor Mignano-Brady
English 102
4/24/2018
Love, Happiness And Sacrifice
Michael Novak once said “Love is not a feeling of happiness. Love is a willingness to sacrifice.” Sometimes the power of love goes above all and we are willing to sacrifice our own happiness for the happiness of the people we love. There are multiple manifestations of sacrifice in the name of love in the short stories “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemmingway, “Children Of The Sea” by Edwidge Danticat and the film “Forever My Girl”.
In “Hills Like White Elephants”, Ernest Hemmingway narrates the story of a young couple’s dialogue at a train station in Spain. In conversation, the man speaks about an operation he wishes for the woman to have. Although the operation is not specified, the reader can deduct that the operation that is being spoken of is an abortion. The woman does not appear to be happy about this conversation, she is concerned about what will happen if she decides to go through with the operation. The man assures her that everything will be fine afterward and that it will fix their problems. The woman agrees to have the operation under the illusion that it will make the couple happy again, like they were before, sacrificing her feelings and desires in order for her significant other to be happy. “Oh yes, but I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine” (Hemmingway 116). The woman’s love for the man is stronger than her desire not to go through with the operation, so she is willing to sacrifice her own happiness for the happiness of her partner. She demonstrates that her desires have no importance to her, all that is important is that the man she loves, loves her back and they can once again be “happy” together.
Each and every individual’s happiness is different. Every person has their own source of happiness. To be happy is not to be jolly all the time. In my opinion, happiness is measured by the level of satisfaction a person has in their life. In Ernest Hemmingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”, the reader can observe that the two characters have different perceptions of happiness. While the woman believes her happiness is derived from the love of her partner, the man believes his happiness can be derived from eliminating the problem that leads him to worry. The man tells the woman that he can’t think about the things she says because he worries. “I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry” (Hemmingway 115). The man wants the woman to believe that he could not be fully happy if she does not have the operation, so he is indirectly asking the women to sacrifice her happiness for his.
At a point in the couple’s conversation. The couple speak about having the world. The saying “To have the world” refers to being happy, but the woman responds that they can not have the world, because the world is not theirs anymore, once it is taken away, you can never get it back (Hemmingway 116). By saying this, the woman means that their happiness does not exist anymore if she has the operation. For the woman, “having the world” would mean to not agree to having the operation, because in reality, that is what would make her truly happy, and that happiness is taken away from her. Sometimes, in life we have expectations of happiness that are unrealistic, like in this case, the man’s expectation that they can be happy after the operation is unrealistic. Following the woman’s decision to have the operation, the man asks her how she is feeling. The woman responds, “I feel fine… There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine” (Hemmingway 117). The woman leads the man to believe that she is fine, masking the unhappiness she truly is feeling. This is a demonstration of false happiness in the face of the sacrifice she is going to make.
Another story that contains sacrifice is “Children Of The Sea” by Edwidge Danticat. The story is composed of a series of letters written, but never exchanged, between a young man and the girl that he deeply loves. The young man is escaping civil unrest in Haiti and must leave home. By leaving, he is sacrificing both his happiness and leaving the one he loves to escape from the life of terror and government oppression. The young man was forced to abandon his home because it was no longer a safe environment to live in. While people make voluntary sacrifices for others or for love, this man’s sacrifice was not out of love, or in order to make someone happy. If he did not make this sacrifice, although he did not survive at sea, he would have likely been killed sooner at home. The sacrifice of his love, his home, and his family was made in order to survive. The young man escaped his home in the hopes that, if he survived at sea, he would have been able to reach Miami and lead a safe and better life.
Another example of sacrifice for love is observed in Edwidge’s story. A young lady, Célianne, was among the people who were on the escape boat with the letters’ author. Célianne was pregnant and her child was born at sea, lifeless. In order for the leaking boat to stay afloat, the passengers were forced to throw overboard any extra weight, including the stillborn child. Célianne was reluctant to throw the baby overboard and continued to hold onto it, fending off sleep, she repeatedly told the story of how she became pregnant after being raped by soldiers in her home. After some time, “She threw it overboard… And quickly after that she jumped in too” (Danticat 26) Célianne’s love for her child was so strong that she sacrificed her life for it. For her, the love for her baby was her source of happiness, therefore letting go of the baby meant letting go of her happiness as well. She simply couldn’t live without it.
“Forever My Girl is a movie about a man, Liam, who ran away on his wedding day to pursue his music career, only to come back eight years later and discover that he has a daughter. During the eight years that he was gone, he became a very famous country singer. He had absolutely no contact with anyone from the town he came from, including his family. The moment he left his wedding, he sacrificed his one true love to pursue his dream. He never stopped loving the girl he left at the altar, Josie. When he came back, his source of happiness reversed and became his girlfriend and their daughter. The singer wrote a song dedicated to the girl that he had left behind, the lyrics to the song “Enough” state “I’d give it all for you if you’d let me, this heart don’t have a home without you in it” (Roe). He vowed to give up his career if pursuing it meant losing them. This is, once again, an example of sacrifice. For the second time in the story, Liam makes a sacrifice. This time he was willing to sacrifice everything he has accomplished for the love that he has for his girlfriend, who soon becomes his wife, and his daughter.
People make sacrifices every single day. Sacrifices are made for love, for happiness, for wealth, and sometimes even for success. It has been said that sacrifices are just steps on the way to achieving what a person wants in life. In my opinion, this is not always the case. As we have observed, some people make sacrifices in order for others to achieve what they want in life, and not for themselves. The woman in “Hills Like White Elephants”, the young man and Célianne in “Children Of The Sea”, and Liam in “Forever My Girl” all made sacrifices for their happiness, for love and for necessity.
.
Works Cited
Williams, Tennesse. “Hills Like White Elephants.” The Norton Introduction To Literature, 10th ed., W.W. Norton & Company , Inc, 2006, pp. 113–117.
Danticat, Edwidge. “Children of the Sea.” Krik? Krak! Soho Press, 2015.
Wolf, Bethany Ashton, director. Forever My Girl. 2018.
Roe, Alex. “Enough”. Forever My Girl.2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment