Sep 17 2008
To Be Together or Not to Be Together…
What Kate Did Next is a blog I enjoy reading written by Kate Lord Brown. As a writer, she has daily prompts attached to her posts that inspire me to write even on the days when writing is going well. But you don’t need to be a writer to enjoy her work. Her fun, insightful pieces will introduce you to new art and artists while making you think long after you have moved on.
Last month, Kate wrote a post titled Light My Fire? that I’ve been thinking about ever since as it relates to a project I’m working on. The post spawned a question that I would like to share with you.
First, I ask you to think of written works such as Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Atonement by Ian McEwan, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Then think of films such as Something’s Gotta Give, When Harry Met Sally, and Serendipity or similar types of romantic comedies. I know these are all very different works of art but they have one common theme, romance.
Ok, now here is my question. When it comes to romance in written or visual works, which type are you more drawn to – the ones where the main characters fight to be together and succeed or the ones where characters that are deeply in love with one another will never be together?
I’m torn. If you take a movie like Something’s Gotta Give which was filled with raw emotion presented in a hilariously, heart-breaking way, I found myself hoping the characters would get together. It just felt like the only place all of the emotion could exist was between those two characters because they either exploded or imploded without one another; they were a mess.
Yet, when the characters in the film Serendipity got together I wasn’t the least bit fulfilled. Was it that they were not exceptionally intriguing characters or that their struggle was not compelling enough? Honestly, I think it was a little of both.
That calls to mind another question. What is it that makes a romantic story compelling – the characters or their struggle, i.e. the things that keep them apart?
On the flip side, as I commented to Kate, maybe we need characters to remain apart in order to be reminded of the importance of love in our lives. Maybe we need to remember that love is fragile, it can disappear in the blink of an eye or can it? Is love everlasting when two people are kept apart? Is it everlasting when they are together? Maybe characters such as Romeo, Juliet and Heathcliff, among others, are our wake up call, because we all fall asleep from time to time, to remind us not to take love for granted.
What do you think?
