Love
Hurts
By
Griffin Fritsch
Often
times, love is a trap. Socially, love is viewed as wonderful and incredible, but we often times don't see the
shadow
that the light
of love produces until we are standing in it. Love can be compared to many things but the most accurately may be to an addictive drug. If the effects of love are happiness and dopamine, when we lose the “high” we return to reality along with the
lack
of bliss and elation which creates a spectrum of happiness, on one end sadness and happiness on the other. Where someone falls on the scale is relative to the amount of happiness and sadness experienced by that one person. But, that's another topic. In the
book Woman Hollering Creek three short stories (and many more not named), One Holy Night, Woman Hollering Creek and Never Marry a Mexican, all emphasize the same theme by displaying an obvious tone. The ambivalent and apologetic tone in the book Woman Hollering
Creek allows the author, Sandra Cisneros, to convey the theme of love, and how it negatively affects those struck by it.
Woman
Hollering Creek is a great example of this mentally enervating theme. In the middle of the story, the wife, Cleofilas, in the story is hit by her husband for the first time, “Instead, when it happened the first time, when they were barely men and wife, she
had been so stunned, it left her speechless, motionless, numb.” “Speechless” “Numb” these words in this text were highlighted by the author because of the truth, and love. The author emphasizes that this is the “first” occurrence of an event as austere as
this, further displaying the relapsing disease like tone of regret and apologeticness. Later on in the text, Cleofilas clarifies many various faults and vices that her husband possesses and practices on a daily bases. The author reveals what Cleofilas is thinking,
“Cleofilas though her life would have to be like that, like a telenovela,
only now the episodes got sadder and sadder. And there were no commercials in between for comic relief. And no happy ending in sight.” Love has destroyed her possibility for happiness and a life she loves, it has just made her “sadder and sadder”. This follows
the underlining theme of love undoubtedly unsympathetically affecting the people captured and seized in the feeling of what love was versus what it really is.
One
Holy Night is another addition to the reoccurring motif that love is often cheap, and has much imperfection. In the first paragraphs in the story, the author opens with an apologetic tone as if she is telling a fable full of regret. By using words and phrases
such as, “they said” and, “that's what they told me” hints at this story is one of anguish and contrite decisions, “It's been 18 weeks since Abuelita chased him away with a broom, and what I'm telling you I never told nobody, except Rachel and Lourdes, who
knew everything. He said he would love me like a revolution, like a religion” The immaturity of this young girl cannot construe between the lies and hard truths of Chaq, the man she is “in love” with. She was hooked on what she thought was love immediately
as if love was an addictive drug, and when this love is taken out of her life the high of happiness falls as well. The tone that arises in the phrases such as, “He said” and, “He would” in this quote early on in the book convey remorseful and apologetic tones,
like something bad will
happen. Later on in the story, as Ixchel discovers the truth about Chaq in a nonchalant fashion, Ixchel asserts, “Bit by bit the truth started to seep out like dangerous gasoline.” She compares the truth to “dangerous gasoline”. The words that she uses makes
it obvious to the reader that she is full of regret and sorrow. Further showing that love along with the truth will “dangerously” and negatively affect those caught inside what love really is, a backbreaking realization of the truth.
Yet
another story that has the same theme and tone portrayed is, Never Marry a Mexican. The readers feel offended by the choice in the title that the author chooses but later, we learn that the author is against marriage in general. “Not a man exists that hasn't
disappointed me, whom I could trust to love the way I love.” These words do portray the reoccurring theme in Woman Hollering Creek. Although the author is not in love or married, she still has the thoughts about love that are biased because of her experience
of it. Her experience with love and affection have been altered by the already structures of her interpretation of what she thinks love is because of an earlier experience. She thinks of love as that it will do more damage than if she stays out of it all together.
Later in the book, the author talks about her history with her parents, “Once daddy was gone it was like my ma did not exist, like if she died too” Although love did work out between her mother and father, once one was gone the loss of love made it feel like
“Ma did not exist anymore” further illustrating the flaws of love, even when it does work out.
Love
tends to leave people unsatisfactory with the feeling of it. Woman Hollering Creek is a great example of this proposition. If love is hard you must be doing it wrong. If you have to change for love, it is not love. The construct of love often leads people
to seek it because of how it occurs to them (this is affected by society), even if they have not felt it or even know what it is. Don't
seek
love because of what society says it is. Love will
come to you, and you will
know when it does.