We've been dancing around the idea that God has created human beings so that we need love and meaningful relationships as much as we need air and food and shelter. Consider this quote from an article called "Love is a Human Need" (http://ezinearticles.com/?Love-is-a-Human-Need&id=2088020): From birth to death, love is not just the focus of human experience but also the life force of the mind, determining our moods, stabilizing our bodily rhythms, and changing the structure of our brains. The body's physiology ensures that relationships determine and fix our identities. Love makes us who we are, and who we can become. (A General Theory of Love, 2000, Lewis by Amini, Lannon, p.viii)
In your opinion, based on what we've been exploring in Far From the Madding Crowd, Woman at Point Zero, Wide Sargasso Sea and Flannery O'Connor's short stories, is this true? And, if so, does our human need for love and meaningful relationships really reflect our deeper need and desire for true communion with God, our creator and the creator of the universe?
Post your thoughts here (aim for at least 250 words). :)
26 comments:
i think this is true because in all the works we read this semester, both healthy and unhealthy relationships were the centerpiece. i feel like it is innate in humans to want to search for love and to find that connection, which often shapes our identity. Love is a force that drives us because it can drive us to very different paths depending on whether the relationships we are caught in are unhealthy or healthy. In the majority of the works we read, we saw the influence of the dependence on unhealthy relationships and the loss of identity that came with it. All in all I think humans are programmed to want to love and to be loved. This can ultimately, lead us towards God because most of the time the love we desire for comes short when we are expecting them from flawed beings like humans. Thus a lot of people turn to God because they believe that the undying love he has for everyone will be fulfilling. However, many wander and wander, from relationship to relationship in search of this feeling of fulfillment from love and I believe this is the reason why we all get hurt and yet find bliss, and why we laugh and cry. It’s amazing when you see the influence of love, and how its projected from our words, actions and behaviors which show how powerful love is and how much we as humans are dependent on it. Thus, I believe that love is a powerful influence and something we as humans strive to search for and depending on the relationship we search for love in, we can be in pure bliss or pure hell.
"The body's physiology ensures that relationships determine and fix our identities." I think this quote pretty much sums up what we have been reading Far From the Madding Crowd, Woman at Point Zero, Wide Sargasso Sea and Flannery O'Connor's short stories. Finding and losing identity is a very big idea that relates all of these literary novels and short stories. We’ve read about women having strong identities and being very independent in the beginning, but ending up losing it because of catastrophic events and unavoidable circumstances in their lives. We’ve also read about weak women who’ve been exposed to an unthinkable culture or society that undermines everything about who they are and what they are to become. All four authors have demonstrated that relationships are a key part of how a person goes about their lives. It’s the interaction that we have with one another that determines what we’re going to say, what we’re going to do and how we’re going to say/do them. Man does need love and meaningful relationships because we come from man and we come from a relationship, that’s where our own lives derive from. I agree with the idea that our human need for love and meaningful relationships really does reflect our deeper need and desire for true communion with God, our creator and the creator of the universe. I agree with this statement because I know who God is and I know that God has created me with love, wanting a relationship with me. My mom’s always telling me about how after she became a parent, she really found how great God’s love was for us. That if she loved me as much as she did, how great would that of God’s be for her and for me as well. It’s amazing how human nature can just unfold in this sort of way and that things that we’ve been blind to can be made clear. We are brilliant human beings, where love and the relationships we have make us who we are and mold us into real human beings that search for real love and real relationships. Far From the Madding Crowd shows us that even if we go through perhaps desperate and devastating relationships/experiences, there can be redemption in the end and we can learn from our mistakes.
Based on the readings, this is true. The protagonist of each novel struggles with a lack of meaningful relationships, and eventually end up mentally and physically destroyed. Although the extent to which this occurs is different for each story, it is obvious that the protagonists as well as other characters are defined by their relationships with others. Bathsheba's superficial interactions with Troy show her fickleness. Firdaus' lack of any real relationship demonstrates her nonentity. Antoinette's insecure relationship with Rochester shows her instability of mind.
The only real love that is shown in any one of these novels is the constant, steadfast love for Bathsheba by Gabriel Oak. Thanks to his loyalty, Bathsheba becomes a character of meaning and strength. Thus, this demonstrates that "love makes us who we are." Also, the novel has an auspicious ending. It seems apparent that Gabriel and Bathsheba will 'live happily ever after.' Readers get a sense of this both from Bathsheba's transformation as well as the loyalty that Gabriel has shown throughout the novel. Therefore, this also sheds light on how love is a foundation for "who we can become."
The story of Firdaus also supports this idea. Although it is obvious that she is a strong character, she eventually ends up an anomaly to the eyes of society.
If love indeed is such a crucial part of our existence, then it definitely reflects our need for a connection with God. The love that is found in human relationships is usually tentative, and even when it is genuine, it has a limit. Only a connection with God will provide the perpetual and infinite love that will mold us into the unimaginable.
Three main women in three novels go through a different experience in searching for their love. Bathsheba from Far From the Madding Crowd falls in love with Troy. When Bathsheba starts to believe that Troy may be having an affair and realizes the story behind him and Fanny, she becomes a totally different person. She becomes all sensitive and does things that she would normally never do. She even says, ““Now anything short of cruelty will content me. Yes the independent and spirited Bathsheba is come to this!” Bathsheba used to be independent. She refused all the men who came after her, but now she has lost her independence and is craving for Troy’s love and care. Then she changes once again when she is with Gabriel. “How” a person may be affected will be different depending on who they are with, but it is true that love can affect a person greatly.
For Firdaus, the case is a bit different from Bathsheba. She had never experienced “love.” She did, but it only ended up with a betrayal and another disappointment. She was never able to open up her mind again after that. Firdaus’ experiences with men were very bad in many ways and this explains why it was so hard for her to fall in love with guys. When Firdaus fell in love, everyone in her office could tell she was in love with someone. This clearly shows that there was a change in the way she behaved or she looked, which once again proves that love can determine a person’s mood or behavior which can lead to who one is and what one can become.
In Wide Sargasso Sea and Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, people are betrayed similar to that of Woman at Point Zero. Antoinette wanted Rochester to lover her, but she could not and she never believed or experienced love at first place because she was such a broken individual. I think Antoinette and Hulga are similar in some way. Both of them are afraid of love, hurt deeply inside and aloof in a way. Antoinette who refuses to get married initially actually wants Rochester to love her and Hulga who was initially planning to play with Manley Pointer actually ends up giving her artificial legs to him. This shows how love is a feeling that cannot be controlled. Both characters display a change in their characteristics because of this feeling of love. If love is something that is so hard to control that people would definitely change in many ways like Antoinette and Hulga changed.
However, I think this kind of love is temporarily and this is where our desire for deeper need and relationship with God comes in place. No love can last forever as love is more of feelings that last for a certain amount of time. However, many say God’s love is eternal. As human beings who cannot be satisfied to this temporarily human love, I think people search for a deeper relationship with God to search for satisfaction in thirst for “everlasting” love.
I do believe that relationships are part of a human’s existence. You can’t deny that love relationships have been around since the beginning of time. In Genesis we see that God intended for relationship to be an essential part of life. He creates Eve from Adam and tells him to, in essence, be with her always. As relationships are always a part of our lives it’s no surprise that Harding, Rhys, O’Connor, and El Saadawi all incorporate it somewhere in their works. Though each work doesn’t show the positive relationships that can be found, there is still an underlying sense of the search for finding the right one. In Far From the Madding Crowd, especially, Bathsheba’s futile attempts at putting herself in fulfilling relationships are her constant struggle throughout the story. In light of the comparison to “communion with God” we could definitely be compared to Bathsheba as during the entire story her true love, Gabriel, sat on the sidelines as God seems to as we try to also find satisfaction. God is patient despite our stupidity at times. In the same way Gabriel was patient to wait for Bathsheba to love him in return. The love in the others works was also there, but for both Wide Sargasso Sea and Woman at Point Zero there wasn’t as much of a positive resolution to be found in the end. Antoinette in WSS lives in a relationship driven by power, greed, and lust with no hope of escape. The relationship along with other factors eventually drives her mad. Though Rochester proves to be a key part in this downfall, she never has any other relationships in order to fall back on. As the quote you mentioned says, “The body's physiology ensures that relationships determine and fix our identities. Love makes us who we are, and who we can become.” Antoinette could have been so much more, possibly not even ending up in an attic if she had found a person in her life willing to accept her. The same is true for Firdaus from Woman at Point Zero.
After reading the books Woman at Point Zero and other short stories, I can see that relationships do fix our identities. The decisions we make as to who we want to be dependent on or who we want to hang out with tells a lot about who we are. It also teaches us of our values. Love changes people. I don't know how exactly, but people have said that love is a powerful emotion. Being able to love someone or something shows us who we are and what we are capable of. Whether this love or relationship ends in a tragedy, it still shapes an individual.
In Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, we can definitely see that to Bathsheba, love or relationships are crucial in determining who she is and that it is definitely a necessity for her. And as we discussed, through Firdaus and her characterization, we can sense that she too wants that relationship, care, and love from her teacher.
I guess the most important relationship we need is the relationship between an individual and God. However, as I live in a world that is physically separated from God, I have a hard time believing that I need a relationship with God. Those who depend on others and those too dependent on relationships do not fully understand that the relationships we make on this earth are of no use when we die. But then I ask myself, why would God create us so that we need love and meaningful relationships as much as we need air and food? I guess this isn’t an easy answer. However, from my personal experiences of life (18years) I have been upset or unsatisfied with relationships that I have had with people. So perhaps this is a way to teach me that all the relationships with people that I want is nothing compared to the love God will give me through our meaningful relationship.
Indeed, we as humans are social creatures by nature. Relationships are a necessity in our life. This is proven time and again through life and literature, where people are redeemed or destroyed through relationships. Moreover, love is and has been depicted relentlessly over time through any and every means of art, again revealing it as a universal theme.
When asked to reflect if this instinctive need for connection is pointing towards God, I would have to say that I have not considered such a thought before. Indeed, considering the Christian perspective, the desire for a complete relationship just might be God’s way of revealing Himself (granted that what people have to offer is never wholly good). It would make sense then, that people are constantly seeking comfort in each other: we are trying to find something that is innately understood but cognitively unexplainable.
But I don’t think that this need for connection is necessarily indicative of the design of a greater intelligence. This is because I consider the world to possess a kind of consciousness that is not necessarily ‘god’, but a simple force. However, this doesn’t mean that I believe that the human need for relationships indicates nothing, that is does not possess some spiritual truth. I do not believe that love is solely something that derived from the need to reproduce. It may carry some weight, I mean, but if we are so intent on relationships for survival purposes… that would be sad.
In books like Far From the Madding Crowd, Woman at Point Zero, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Flannery O'Conner's short stories make this statement seem true.
They all lean towards the idea that relationships are the most important thing in our world. Whether this be from diction, symbology, or some other english-mumbojumbo this is an obvious solution.
As to whether this has anything to do with God I have to ignore this logic path. Though if I believed in God I would say that humans challenging one another with relationship issues presents a unique situation which could ultimately be glorifying to Him.
Based on the books that we've studied this semester I think the quote is in fact true.
In Far From the Madding Crowd, we saw Bathsheba as the central character needing for true love. However, she falls for Troy who just marries her for the money. Bathsheba's love for Troy is also not genuine love but rather lust (She gets married to him because Troy makes her jealous. Remember?)
In the end, she does in fact find true love and the story ends happily ever after.
In Woman at Point Zero, the kind of love Ferdaus tries to find is different. The relationship she tries to find is not only love but also moral support from anyone. From birth, she is not cared by anyone and even in her adult life there is not one single male who would fully support her, trust her and love her. In the end, she is left but to kill another person and tragically dies. The absense of meaningful and true relationships in her life made her story so powerful and devastating.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, we also see Antoinette and her being rejected from everyone: Her mother, Tia, stepfather and Rochster. This worsens her mental health and as readers we read until she's about to burn the house down.
For the second quotation, I guess this depends on whether you're a believer or not. Christians believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) that God created relationships and that when he first placed Adam and Eve on earth that their relationship was perfect and holy. However, after they disobeyed God and betrayed his will, they were kicked out of Eden and relationships fell apart. In a Christian perspective, any relationship that is not based on God will not last long or will not be truly meaningful. So, yes, for Christians the human desire and need for love reflect how people really need a true Communion with God.
For me, I'm still unsure about my relationship with God and my faith for Him, so the answer to that question for me would be, "I don't know."
"The body's physiology ensures that relationships determine and fix our identities. Love makes us who we are, and who we can become." I think quote can act as a theme statement for all the works we've explored, Far From the Madding Crowd, Wide Sargasso Sea, Woman at Point Zero, and Flannery O'Connor's short stories. We see the evidence of this from all of the works.
We see how superficial "love" had impacted Bathsheba. She lost her strength as a woman and her independence. We see how true love relationship with Gabriel Oak eventually redeems her at the end of the novel.
In Wide Sargasso Sea and Woman at Point Zero, it is very clear what sort of impact has been made as a result of lack of true loving relationship and rejection from family, culture, and society. These two works definitely highlight the importance of love as the determinant of our identity.
I do believe it is true that humans have the need for love and meaningful relationships. I think this desire for love has led us to seek out God, since God is love, the eternal and unconditional love.
I think this is true because in the books we studied, we can see that the concept of relationship led to their ultimate fate and their sanity. Antoinette and Firdaus lacked real meaningful relationships, which led to their downfall and destruction. On the other hand, we could see that Bathsheba was able to acquire true relationship in the end, which transforms her constantly throughout the novel.
I think this means that all humans are born with this desire for connection and relationship with others and without it, it might mean being unable to find your true identity. And I think in love itself, we can find God because God is love and as we experience different feelings and emotions from love, I believe that we can feel God’s presence even better. Through this, I believe that God desires for us to have a true communion with God. The kind of love he wants is probably that with others which kind of circles around him. But not everyone wants love to have true communion with God and I believe that love is one of the ways of knowing God but not everyone uses love as means of communicating and connecting with God. Perhaps, God intended humans to want connection and relationships in life for those who don’t know him very well, and without experiencing human love first, we might be unable to understand his love at all. Our human love is incomparable with God’s love. But perhaps, as we long for meaningful human relationships, deep inside, our innermost self might be telling us that we want to be closer and have a more meaningful relationship with God, our creator. Even without having the desire to have true communion with God, I think love is a present from God…to all of us, regardless of our relationship with God.
Based on the three books we’ve been studying, the idea of relationships, and the enormity of its effect on individuals were pretty obvious and extreme. Thus the statement of the quote is making that relationship is what’s innate in humans (and that love is the center of our physical and mental being) is completely true in the three works. While in Far From the Madding Crowd, the main characters Bathsheba and Oak have a happy ending, and the other two works, Wide Sargasso Sea, Woman at Point Zero, and Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, have had the most tragic endings, all of these works illustrate the importance of relationships and true connection. The drastic impact on the characters due to the relationships (healthy or not) or lack of relationships they had with another character or the world, was prevalent throughout these works. This human need for love and meaningful relationship with others, reflect how important it is to have a true communion with God. If we can’t survive without relationship amongst each other, who are sinners and so tiny in the presence of God, the importance and the need for true unity with our Creator is too grand of an idea to even conceive with our human brain. And so, I think it is important for us, as part of this society and as children of God to really explore the significance of having true connection or without it either by experience or vicariously through characters in literary works. This way we may have a better understanding of how loving our Father is for creating us that way.
“人” this is the Chinese character for human. Its shape symbolizes two people leaning on each other. As you can see here, for centuries people believed that people cannot live by themselves. If you go further, it means that people cannot live without the love of others. Love is a feeling that is unexplainable and fascinating. Sometimes people say they feel the electricity when they see their loved ones and others try to explain their love in words but often times they cannot fully express their feelings in words. Like this love is a feeling that is more than a feeling. Since it is so important and crucial in human relationships, love can make people live but without it, it will lead to destruction and isolation. However, it is hard to define that humans need love to live and have a good relationship with others because love is a broad term. In Korea, we have a word called 정(jung). It is a feeling that we feel towards family, friends, people who’ve been around us for some time, and even for enemies. It is hard to explain it in English because there is no similar word for 정(jung). I believe love and 정(jung) is different so I think love is not what keep us and our relationship alive. I think it is 정(jung) that keeps our relationship alive. The unexplainable feeling that connects between people, which can partially be defined by the word 정(jung) and love, exists between human relationships, healthy or unhealthy relationships. Moreover, because of this unexplainable feeling, we often turn to God and ask for help when there is a problem. Because we do not know fully of the crucial feeling that connects people, we ask for God for guidance. Thus, our need for love and 정(jung), we see the need of God. However, I do not think it is the only reason why people need God because there are still numerous things in our lives that make us powerless and a result ask for God’s help.
I think that the quote does express truths about how love and relationships affect us. It’s often said that people in love will do anything for each other, and that women who are in love look and feel more beautiful. Hence, I can see that “relationships determine and fix our identities” because it is the underlying motive for many of our actions and words. Healthy and meaningful relationships are the connections from which the love that’s described moves people. However, some of the relationships in the novels display the opposite, what happens when there isn’t mutual love. Such as Antoinette’s and Rochester’s relationship that ends up in ruins because Rochester didn’t want a meaningful relationship. Only the relationship between Gabriel and Bathsheba sheds light on the positive impact a loving relationship can have. Firdaus gets used in her relationships. She is fooled by Ibrahim (?) when she is working and thinks he loves her, but he is merely using her for sex. All the men she meets don’t desire a meaningful relationship with her, they abuse her and she continually searches for love but never finds it.
So as humans, our need for meaningful relationships does reflect our deeper need for true communion with God. We are created in God’s image which shows that we do desire a deep connection with Him as well. I think it’s the piece in life that people describe when they say need meaning and something more to life.
"Love makes us who we are, and who we can become." Yes, I strongly agree with this quote. Love something that's a part of us, so if a component of our bodies, methaphorically speaking, is missing and not recieved, then everything falls apart. As many have heard, everything is interconnected and functions as a whole. We can support this by looking at the works Far From the Madding Crowd, Woman at Point Zero, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Flannery O'Connor's short stories. The relationships formed in the different works reflect how significant and crucial love is in a person's life. Take Antoinette for example, ever since she was young, Antoinette never recieved the love deserved and needed. In result, she ended up hopeless and destroyed. Because love is so important to a person's existance, I do believe that our human need for love does reflect our closer need for God's love and desire for true communion with Him. Human existance is lost without love. I can connect with this, because when I was hopeless and lost in the past, God's love fulfilled my desires and saved me. Thus, our creater's undying love for us can fulfill and provide what is needed and crucial to our lives, which makes us search and seek out God even more.
What a warm and fuzzy feeling, eh? To say that love is what we need… that love is an inherent part of the human existence. How nice. How wonderful. How romantic.
Love is good… it is such a cliché. But we love it anyways. I love to love and we love to talk about love. Even when we get hurt by love; even when we realize that love isn’t the love we think is; even when love turns out to be nothing but a pile of dung… we ignore the negatives and say that love is perfect.
It is this mindset that allows us to connect the novels we studied with one aspect: love. But truly, are they connect with this single and most commonly used (and abused) emotion called love? I think not. First of all, isn’t it an insult to these complex and intricate books to say that love is the single connecting element? Yes, the stories have strong elements of relationship prevalent throughout its plots and characters. Yet, love is not, and should not, be the focus of these novels.
So, does love make us who we are, and who we can become? My answer is in the negative. Neither is this true in the stories we’ve studied nor is this true in life. The reason I say this lies in my understanding of love as a single aspect of life. Although it is often quite influential and powerful in shaping our identity, it is only one factor, out of many, that affects who we are and who we become; in no way does love singularly dictate our growth as a human being. With that said, I feel no need to answer the second question as the answer to my first question disables me from answering the second. However, I do feel the need to explain what does shape our identities.
The human experience in life. That’s the answer. Quite broad, is it not? Yes, of course; but it has to be. There is no other way to sum up every single thing that contributes to the formation of our identity, other than by saying: everything. Like I said, love is one thing we encounter in life, but the culture that fosters us emphasizes this “love.” However one defines the term “love” it has been overly used in our current society to reveal certain aspects of the human experience. Sometimes, it has been used as the sole representation of the human experience, as in this case. Yes, under the cultural boundaries and standards that limit us, we can say that love has played a predominant role in shaping the identities of the characters we’ve studies this unit. However, when the standards and expectations are changed, so is the labeling of the human experience changed. No longer is “love” the label for the human experience that shapes our identity, but something else replaces that. Let it be hate, oppression, depression, joy, or whatever. We can give the human experience and single tag and say that it’s one thing but it can never be expressed with one word.
Love is great. It’s often used in our current society to express things that are genuinely good. But does it really shape our identities? Perhaps the forces that affect us to shift who we are can be called love. But I wouldn’t necessarily limit it to the concept of love that we are familiar with. I think it’s bigger than that. Something that we don’t perhaps understand to a full extent. Whatever it is. It’s good, and it should be appreciated. Especially because the characters we are familiar with in our current studies have all lack this specific quality of life that so many of us abundantly have.
I agree that humans need love and meaningful relationships. I say this because it can be seen not only in the works that we have studied but also in my life and the lives of others. Because we need love and meaningful relationships, we do not always make the wisest choice, which can be seen very clearly in the works we have studied. In the works, we saw the protagonists enter injurious relationships because of their cravings for relationships. The lives of normal people are no different. We want relationships, which is why so many people start dating nowadays, especially at a young age. However, most often than not, we find these relationships to be very shallow and often lead to separation. What’s interesting is that humans constantly crave for love and meaningful relationships even though they are, time and time again, broken by the same relationships. In Far From the Madding Crowd, Bathsheba is in a couple relationships that end horribly. She marries Troy because she thinks that she loves him, but their relationship also leads to separation. However, this does not stop her from trying to find a meaningful relationship, which she does through Gabriel Oak. In Woman at Point Zero, Firdaus tries to look for meaningful relationships all throughout her life because they have been lacking. Unfortunately, no one is able to realize her desperate need for one and her need is ignored. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette is rejected by everyone because they all fail to understand her. She, too, is craving to find a true relationship, but fails to do so. I believe that it shows our insatiable desire for a true relationship. This desire can be satisfied by only one being, God. It is only after having a true relationship with Him that we will feel satisfied.
I totally agree that our relationships with other people show us more that we need a relationship with God. The most powerful example is the flaws of mankind. Humans as you know are not perfect and relationships ALWAYS have rocky times and sometimes they end up in permanent breakups. Through these painful times we see that the only relationship that humans can count on is a relationship with God. (This is sounding way too preachy). This is clearly shown in the works we have studied. For example the theme for Woman at Point Zero is that if relationships are based on self desire, then the relationships will be destroyed and throughout the story we see Firdaus getting hammered by relationships like this all the time. From this I see that the only relationship that is completely selfless is one with God.
Another example is in the book Wide Sargasso Sea where Antoinette is stuck with a relationship based on self gain with Rochester. Through this we see that Antoinette is driven crazy.
From all of these books all we see are unhealthy relationships that end up in the destruction of the relationship.
Another example is when relationships are going really well. This is when I think that if a relationship is going really well with a imperfect human being, then how much better would a relationship with a perfect God be like?
In all the novels that we have explored, we see that all our protagonists struggle to find a meaningful relationship which shaped their lives into a negative direction.
It is clearly evident that as a human being, we ultimately seek for an everlasting relationship. We are all born wanting to feel loved and having the chance to love back. The reason for that is because a human being feels as though we must find our place in the world and feel important to someone or somebody to feel the worth of their being.
I personally think that our human need for love and meaningful relationships do really reflect our deeper need and desire for true communion with God because as we go through hard times with relationships at some point in our lives, we get to ponder on who we can really depend on at all times. Most people in the universe who believe in a certain religion want to find meaning in life/universe and distinguish the purpose of their existence. We live life and get influenced by many people around us. Many times, people will fail you and corrupt you. In the end, we emotionally become exhausted and wonder if we can live through life on our own. Yet God doesn’t allow life to happen in that kind of procedure. God didn’t create only one person but created many in order for us to create relationships. Even in the bible, we see that Adam was lonely, so God has created Eve. We all long for meaningful relationships, and to obtain one, we must build our relationship with God and his creations in order to satisfy our needs.
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