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  • Essay / The House on Mango Street, The Mother and How Can I...

    Dictionaries define love as “a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as to a parent, child or a friend.” (“Love” 1) Love is an important element in life because this feeling can give people a support network, a feeling of worth, as well as many other positive things. Love can be a good thing, but it can also be harmful. This means that it may have more negative impacts on the person than positive impacts, but these types of relationships with people are still important learning aspects in life. Many literary works incorporate different forms of love. The works The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cosneros, The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks and How do I love thee? Let Me Count the Ways by Elizabeth Barrett Browning are great examples of love in literature and each takes a different spin on love. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros demonstrates ideas about love. Love in this story is described more as the need to have support and the feeling of worth, importance and worth rather than the materialistic objects of life. Since the working family doesn't have much money, they can't afford some of the non-essential things they want. “They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours forever so we wouldn't have to move every year.” (Cisneros 99) This quote shows that the family may not have all the big house they want, but they still have a roof over their heads. Even though they can't afford certain materialistic things that they would like to have for each other, they have memories. This love does not manifest itself as harmful love or even romantic love, the feeling of love is that which is seen between families. Love between families is...... middle of paper ...... love of all kinds, like the works demonstrated: familial, harmful and romantic. These works give the reader a way to identify with or become familiar with different types of love. This provides an opportunity to learn about things they may not be familiar with. They were all well written and varied so differently that they are a great group to see the difference between types of love. Works Cited Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. “How can I love you? Let me count the paths. 1850. Voices among women. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 208. Print. Brooks, Gwendolyn. “The Mother.” 1945. Voices among women. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin, 2009. 205-206. Print.Cisneros, Sandra. “The house on Mango Street”. 1983. Voices among women. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin, 2009. 99-100. Print. " Love ". Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, and Web. April 19. 2014.