Victim Of Love In Anne Carson's 'On Walking Backwards'
Aiwen Zhang
Professor Griffin
Fall 2013
September 27, 2013
Unit 1 Assignment Final Draft Victim of Love The writer of Short Talks (1992), Anne Carson, is a Canadian poet, an essayist and a literary critic. She is erudite and innovative, having various fields of knowledge and writing with facetious languages and meaningful thought. Anne Carson would like to leave open mind for her readers as she said: ”I don’t know that we really think any thoughts. That’s where the mind moves, that’s what’s new.”(264) Readers are given complete freedom to understand what they read and move the minds to different directions. The piece “On Walking Backwards” of the short talks catches my …show more content…
This disagreement could be raised because there is a big question: although Carson uses the discouraging word “victim”, how Carson really defines the name- “victim of love” she gives. If we try digging the further sentiment covered by her language, we can found she sort of agrees with the choice that people choose to love and sacrifice for their love in obscurity because she says: ”the dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us”. Walking backward represents no improvement even going to worse situation. However, in her voice, she insists that they just do walk behind us, which can be seen as one kind of guard. Someone is willing to die for our love and just walk behind us to guard us. Carson admires these people’s braveness and great contributions. From history to nowadays society, from drama to novel, there are plenty of famous and moved example of dying for love. For example, Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy is written by William Shakespeare. It talks about two young people love each other deeply but they cannot be lovers and live together because of their feuding families. Ultimately, for the pain they suffer from not allowed to love each other, they choose to die. Romeo drinks the poison because he believes Juliet has been dead. Juliet stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger after she finds Romeo dead. Up to now, it is still one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays although the society background and people’s attitude have changed a lot. Love is a forever topic. People praise Romeo and Juliet’s royalty and steadfastness for love although this is a tragedy and actually their death is unnecessary and evitable. From the reflection of this kind of love story, most people still accept the idea that it’s reasonable for people to die for love and become
Professor Griffin
Fall 2013
September 27, 2013
Unit 1 Assignment Final Draft Victim of Love The writer of Short Talks (1992), Anne Carson, is a Canadian poet, an essayist and a literary critic. She is erudite and innovative, having various fields of knowledge and writing with facetious languages and meaningful thought. Anne Carson would like to leave open mind for her readers as she said: ”I don’t know that we really think any thoughts. That’s where the mind moves, that’s what’s new.”(264) Readers are given complete freedom to understand what they read and move the minds to different directions. The piece “On Walking Backwards” of the short talks catches my …show more content…
This disagreement could be raised because there is a big question: although Carson uses the discouraging word “victim”, how Carson really defines the name- “victim of love” she gives. If we try digging the further sentiment covered by her language, we can found she sort of agrees with the choice that people choose to love and sacrifice for their love in obscurity because she says: ”the dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us”. Walking backward represents no improvement even going to worse situation. However, in her voice, she insists that they just do walk behind us, which can be seen as one kind of guard. Someone is willing to die for our love and just walk behind us to guard us. Carson admires these people’s braveness and great contributions. From history to nowadays society, from drama to novel, there are plenty of famous and moved example of dying for love. For example, Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy is written by William Shakespeare. It talks about two young people love each other deeply but they cannot be lovers and live together because of their feuding families. Ultimately, for the pain they suffer from not allowed to love each other, they choose to die. Romeo drinks the poison because he believes Juliet has been dead. Juliet stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger after she finds Romeo dead. Up to now, it is still one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays although the society background and people’s attitude have changed a lot. Love is a forever topic. People praise Romeo and Juliet’s royalty and steadfastness for love although this is a tragedy and actually their death is unnecessary and evitable. From the reflection of this kind of love story, most people still accept the idea that it’s reasonable for people to die for love and become