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Only Love and Then Oblivion

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Only love and then oblivion

Love is a well known concept; we hear it almost every day and many people have experienced love. However, it could be in many forms; you can feel love for your mother, love for your friends, or even love for animals. It is a concept some people dedicate their lives to; their ultimate goal in life is to find love, mostly romantic love. Since love is such a big deal in so many people’s lives, you start to question whether love is just something humankind have created, or if it really is a basic human instinct.

Ian McEwan thinks it’s an instinct. That is at least what he shows in his article “Only love and then oblivion” from 2001. In the article he reflects over the 9/11 incident, which makes it a reflective article. A quote that proves he thinks it’s an instinct could be this: “There was really only one thing for her to say […] I love you.”. This shows that love is what we think about in our last moments. If imagined into this situation, being in the towers when the planes hit, most people would not know what to do. It would be confusing and you could not think straight. Therefore, when the only thing she can think about is love, it proves that it’s a human instinct. In addition, many people thought of love in their last moments; “what was striking was what they [the phonecalls] had in common. A new technology has shown us an ancient, human universal.” With ancient universal, he means love. Another thing McEwan portrays is that disasters have an impact on our daily lives; “Lately, most of us have inhabited the space between the terrible actuality and these daydreams. Waking before dawn, going about our business during the day, we fantasize ourselves into the events”.

To convince the reader that his arguments are correct, McEwan uses rhetorical means. For the most part he engages his audience, and he does that by asking a lot of rhetorical questions; for example “What if it was me?”. This makes the reader think about what they would do in the situations he’s describing. The readers then reflect over it, just like McEwan did. By addressing the audience this way, he hopes to make us feel something, for example the love or the horror of being on the planes. In other words, he’s using the appeal form pathos, which appeals to the reader’s feelings. He mainly uses this in his article, but he also uses ethos, which creates credibility. A quote to prove it could be this: “In our delirium, most of us wanted to talk”. This creates credibility by stating something that we know beforehand because we experienced it ourselves; we needed to talk, and therefore he is right in this statement. And when he is right, we are more likely to believe his other statements.
He also uses figurative language; for example comparisons: “the first plane disappearing into the side of the tower as cleanly as a posted letter”. They make it easier to comprehend the incident, if they didn’t already know about it, we imagine the situation better. He also uses metaphors; for example “the couple jumping into the void, hand in hand”. They are obviously not jumping into the void, but to the ground. But by saying “void” he creates a image of there being no hope for survival, which makes it more tragic.

The message of the article is that love is firstly the last thing you think about before you die. That it is the only thing you are able to think about in your last moments. He also says that love is a widely known and universal phenomenon, both in the past and today.

The nature of love is a very wide term; according to the ancient Greeks there are seven types of love; agape, storge, pragma, philautia, philia, ludus og eros. These types of love are, in the same order, love for humanity, family or friends (platonic love), love that endures, for yourself, love created by shared experiences or interests, playful or flirty love, and romantic or sexual love. The phonecalls described in McEwans article are romantic or platonic love, but what he describes afterwards, where everyone wanted to talk or reflect over the attack could be perceived as philia (love created by shared experiences) because that is what it was; the love we felt at that time was created by the attack. On the other hand, it could also be agape, love for humanity; it brought us all together, and we were more loving towards others, even strangers. Love can be many things, and you can feel different kinds of love.

Love is also ruthless; it doesn’t care about anything. You hear many examples of people meeting at the wrong time or wrong place; for example if you were in a relationship but then fell in love with someone else. Or if you fell in love with someone moving away. There are many examples of love being ruthless, especially in entertainment. An example could be Annie Proulx’ novel “Brokeback Mountain”, which is about two homosexual men, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, who fall in love. But because the novel is set in Texas, USA, the romantic love they feel is ruthless. Religion is very common there, which brings a lot of homophobia. However, love didn’t care about that, and it made them fall in love even though they did not want to.

But what is the point of love in general? This question is very well debated, and you can find many different answers. The probably most common answer is that love is the most fundamental and best thing to have in your life, and the point of love is to have something to create your existence around. This is probably why so many have love as their goal in life. Another, more philosophical answer could be that love is a man-made term that makes us cope with the fact that we are only here for a small amount of time; so we created love to make our existence mean something, and to give everyone something to strive after. If love did not exist, many people would have difficulties finding a goal in life, because then what would matter? The answers are endless, and many things can influence the answers for example religion or culture. There has not yet been a concluding answer to what the point of love is.

According to McEwan love is a basic human instinct, because it is the thing we think about in our last moments; many of the people in the two towers called their loved ones. He also means that love is a universal no matter the time or place. According to the greek love can be categorized into seven groups, which describes different kinds of love. Love is ruthless, and the point of love is very well debated, and it can be hard to determine what the point of love is because everyone is biased in some way.

--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety2
[ 2 ]. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety2
[ 3 ]. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety2
[ 4 ]. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety2
[ 5 ]. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety2
[ 6 ]. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety2
[ 7 ]. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety2
[ 8 ]. Se fodnote 2
[ 9 ]. http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/festivals-series/festival-of-love/the-seven-kinds-of-love

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