NGN2001D: Global Narratives - Mid-term Essay

Global Narratives, Essay 1: Textual Analysis

Write an analytical essay about one of the texts we have read so far. Your task is to analyse certain a passage or passages from the text (using textual evidence) and provide a valid and sound interpretation. DO NOT evaluate or cite other sources: you do not need to agree or disagree with what you think the author is saying, simply tell us what you think it is saying, and why you think this is the case.

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Grade received: A

PERSPECTIVES ON THE DEFINITIONS OF TRUE LOVE IN LOVE BY EILEEN CHANG

Love by Eileen Chang portrays the life of a girl from a well-to-do family and how the incidental meeting with a young man living opposite her house affected her personally. The text that I am going to analyse is the English translation of the original story by Qiaomei Tang. The theme of the story revolves around what is love and how love arises. In this essay, I will examine how different interpretations of love may appear as the story unfolds and I will explain four characteristics of love that I can identify: incidental love, love as something that gives a person the will to live, love as the choices that we make, and incomplete love.

Love can be interpreted as something that happens at random, without plans nor intentions. The girl met the young man under the peach tree, in her white-moon dress. Unprecedentedly, the young man approached her, and said softly: “Oh, you are here as well?”. It just happened coincidentally, without the girl and the young man planning to meet each other, nor did they plan anything to say to each other. Even everything around them supported their love. “The peach tree” symbolises stability and good things in Chinese culture. The “white-moon dress” represents peace, reunion, and pure love. The sheer contrast between how others treated the girl and how the young man treated the girl gives strength to their love. In the girl’s life, people approached her with a motive in mind: “matchmakers came with marriage proposals”, “abducted by a relative”, “be a concubine in a strange land”. But the young man is different, he just simply came close to her, only to softly say: “Oh, you are here as well?”. We can notice something strange about his meeting with the girl. Usually, we open the conversation with a greeting. But the young man opened the conversation with a question. This question is also unlike other questions. This question does not ask for her well-being or any of her personal information, even though it was their first meeting. This question just came out of pure surprise.The phrase “as well” in the question breaks through the barrier between them, highlighting what they have in common. Even though the girl and the young man may have different socio-economic backgrounds, the fact that they happened to meet each other coincidentally transcends everything that stands between them. And they just “stood for a while”, as if they could understand each other, as if they could enter the world of the other, as if there was no need for anything to be expressed by words.

Love can be interpreted as something that triumphs over obstacles and gives us the motivation to continue living. When reading the story, we may wonder whether the meeting with the young man really happened. It seems so smooth, and surreal like a dream. But it does not matter whether the meeting with the young man was real or whether she imagined it, the important thing is that it is what gave her the will to continue living. Throughout her life, she was treated as an object, void of personality and voices. She was abducted by a relative. She was enslaved as a concubine in a strange land. She was resold again and again. An average person in her circumstances would have thought of suicide, or at least a slight act of self-harm. But she did not submit herself to any of such kind. No matter what came at her, be it “winds” or “waves”, the meeting with the young man remained flickering in her memory, or to say, her heart. It gave her the inner power to continue her life, “in her old age, she still remembers the scene from long ago”. Even though she had undergone what could be considered trauma, she chose not to talk about it. It seems as if what she experienced did not mean anything to her at all, for what she wanted to talk about is the young man. Isn’t it somewhat familiar to how we keep trying, unconcerned of the challenges life throws at us, dreaming that one day, we could climb the Everest of our lives?

Love can be interpreted as the choices we make regarding random encounters. The girl and the young man happened to be at the right place, at the right time, but they chose to just walk away. And this simple decision surely had its influence on what followed in the story. The girl loved the young man, and the parallel could be true for the young man. But they took no action to pursue their love. We could not help but wonder how the story would have ended if she had chosen to tell him how she felt. Would he also tell her how he felt? Would they have had a happy forever-after ending? Love is just as simple as the decisions we make. For each decision, a new door opens. Sometimes, we enter a world of happiness. Sometimes, we trespass upon the realm of suffering. We do not know what will bring about which. We simply choose, and possibly hope for the best.

The element of incomplete love is also essential to the story. The girl met the young man in a very beautiful and romantic setting. This is in high contrast with what was going to happen next, when the girl was kidnapped and enslaved. Even though the girl could not meet the young man again, she longed for him: “She spoke often of that young man”. She cannot know what has happened to the young man. She cannot know if he has changed and how he has changed. She cannot even see him one more time. What she could only know was what he said to her: “Oh, you are here as well?”. This incompleteness of their romantic story partially contributes to the beauty of their love.

In Love by Eileen Chang, love can possess four characteristics: incidental love, love as something that gives a person the will to live, love as the choices that we make, and incomplete love. However, it does not mean that my essay has covered all of the possible ways love can be interpreted from the story. Love can also be thought of as convenient love since the girl felt for the young man who lived opposite her house. When the story finally reaches its end, we admire the love between the girl and the young man. We feel slightly empty when they could not see each other again. And most importantly, we cannot help but ponder how our love will be.

1107 words.

Works Cited

Eileen Chang. Love. Translated by Qiaomei Tang, unknown year.