History of Love Essay

The fear of losing something, whether it is ones own life, the lives of write out ones, or memories, is what drives many of the things populate do. The quotations in The History of Love be from contrary generations and beget gone through different experiences but they all strive to sustain experience, avoid d buryh, rhythm off misery, and find a bearable truth in the sometimes unbearable reality of living. They are linked together through the theme of survival. Through different methods, they seek to physically deliver the goods and handle their love for others alive. To begin with, red cent attempts to help his sister and mother physically survive when the world ends. Bird believes that the world will end by a flood. He goes around the neighborhood looking for things that people have thrown away with the garbage and Styrofoam because it floats to build an ark (151). Bird believes that with the ark, his mother and Alma dont have to worry ab bulge out survival when the floo d comes (204).Secondly, Alma Singer demonstrates a strong desire to physically survive and preserve her memories and conjunction with her deceased father by taking interest in surviving in the wilderness and reading The History of Love. When she discovers that her father loved the outdoors, Alma decides to hold up an expert at surviving in the wilderness in order to keep her memory of her father alive and maintain a participation with him. She learns survival skills by purchasing and closely reading a book called Edible Plants and Flowers in northwest America, memorizing the Universal Edibility Test, and practicing assembling her fathers tent in record time so that she can survive in places like the Peruvian Andes like her father (42). In addition, her memories of her father become more faint, unclear, and distant as each year passes and it does not help that her mother threw away approximately of his belongings (190).She turns to the book, The History of Love, hoping to find o ut something true about her father, and the things he would have precious to assure her if he hadnt died (181). Alma tries to keep her love and memories for her father alive by find meaning out of the passions and belongings of her father. In contrast to Alma, Charlotte Singer survives and continues her love for her husband by creating a world that focuses on her memoires and feelings for her husband, David. She survives by never falling out of love with him and keeping her love as alive as the summer they first met (45). She holds on to her memories and love for her husband by following sculptor and painter Alberto Giacomettis idea that in order to paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape (45). In attempt to hold on to a certain feeling, Charlotte insulates herself with memories of her life with David by building a world out of them where she knew how to survive in, even if no one else could (181).As a result, she sacrificed the world and her connection with her chi ldren and other people (46). Similar to Charlotte, king of beastss unwavering love for Alma Mereminsky allows him to physically survive the final solution in Europe. With the Nazi invasion of Slonim, Leo was forced into a constant state of running and hiding. In order to survive, he hid in trees, cracks, cellars, and holes and lived in forests, subsiding on anything he could put in his lecture such as bugs, worms, and unclean water from puddles (12, 226). During the winter, he would hide in potato cellars for warmth and eat raw rat meat. Despite these horrible experiences, Leos deep love for Alma M. and his hope to reunify with her motivated Leo to want to live very badly and ultimately enabled him to survive the Holocaust (226). and as Leo used the writing of The History of Love to help him survive his separation from Alma M. during his youth, at the end of his life he uses writing once again to help him survive. Leo uses writing and fancy to survive loss and loneliness. At the e nd of his life, he writes Words for Everything, his life story. He uses this creative regale as a way to cope with the separation and loss of his parents, siblings, the only woman he ever wanted to love, son, time, and childhood home, among many other things (168). Leo also uses his imagination to survive loneliness. During his childhood he used imagination to cope with being different than others and later in his life, he uses it to create a friend, Bruno. Bruno, Leos old faithful is revealed to be the friend that he didnt have and the greatest character he ever wrote, based on his childhood friend who was killed in Slonim during the Holocaust (6, 249).Bruno, someone Leo invented so he could live, was resurrected in his imagination to compensate for his inability to relate to the world and assuage his own loneliness (167). Leo uses writing and imagination to survive in different stages of his life. For the characters of The History of Love, there are different contexts and methods for survival. For Bird, it is pregnant that his mother and sister physically survive the flood that he believes is coming. To Alma Singer, her obsession with physical survival in the wilderness stems from her attempt to keep her connection, memories, and love for her father alive.Simultaneously, Charlotte closes herself from the world so that she can preserve her love and memories of her deceased husband. Bird, Alma S., and Charlottes connection and methods for survival all underline Leos journey of survival. In the early part of his life, Leo uses his love for Alma Mereminsky to physically stay alive during the Holocaust. At the end of his life, he uses writing and imagination to survive separation, loss, and loneliness. Each character has their own story but they are connected through a strong will for their own survival and the survival of their loved ones and irreplaceable love and memories of them.