"What is Love" Essay

Paper Summary:

This essay compares the type of love experienced between two individuals, known as romantic love, with the type of love experienced between a parent and child, known as agape love. The paper looks at how the two types of love are different and how they are alike and concludes that both of them are painful, powerful, and universal.

From the Paper:

"At five years old, I could barely understand the words printed on the refrigerator magnets by Kim Casali. One of Casali's quips read, "Love is The right person, the right place." Another read "Love is not losing a loved one, but gaining an angel." At five, I barely understood the meaning behind Casali's words; love was beyond grown-up analysis. Love was simple: Love was my mom, my dad, my friend, the sense of being appreciated, understood, and valued for my uniqueness. Come puberty, love took on an entirely new meaning. Love became divested of its universal, unconditional, spiritual nature and became clothed in visions of romance and eroticism. Forcing eighth-graders to read Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as opposed to King Lear is probably no accident; teenagers feel romantic love as intently as a baby feels hunger. However, the type of love that a sixteen-year old feels for her boyfriend is of a different quality than the type of love a five-year old feels for her mom. When I read Casali's "Love is?" series of comics on my parents' refrigerator, for instance, I did not know what "Love is getting lost in your thoughts about him" meant. That particular comic refers specifically to erotic love, a concept that most five-year olds do not understand."

More papers on "What is Love" Essay:

• Argumentative Essay # 5565 : "What's Love Got to Do With It?"
• Essay # 137336 : "Definition Essay"
• Analytical Essay # 122085 : "Love in "Much Ado About Nothing"

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