{"id":397,"date":"2015-02-11T12:38:16","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T17:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=397"},"modified":"2015-02-11T21:58:19","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T02:58:19","slug":"is-love-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2015\/02\/11\/is-love-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Love Real?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cA pre-war sky. Before the first world war there were days and days like this; long English meadows, insect hum, innocence and blue sky\u201d (161).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This passage occurs when the narrator is on a train to London, daydreaming (or, rather, creating fictions) about an idyllic day with Louise. The repetition of both the words \u201csky\u201d and \u201cdays\u201d creates a sense of infinity and\/or\u00a0endless time, even though\u00a0our narrator is merely\u00a0looking back on a moment\u00a0that is constructed, a\u00a0utopic fantasy. Meanwhile, the\u00a0repetition of the word \u201cwar\u201d seems to\u00a0oppose this sense of serenity with its violent associations, but because the focus is on a time <em>before<\/em>\u00a0war, the passage maintains its dreamy tone. Read aloud, the constant use of the \u2018s\u2019 sound (\u201cinsect hum, innocence\u201d) further creates a feeling of warmth, sleepiness, and safety. In contrast with the novel&#8217;s opening, here\u00a0nature connotes a\u00a0return to happiness and peace.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, the idea of \u201cpre-war\u201d suggests\u00a0that war is inevitable, that this peaceful time has <em>already<\/em> ended. But the narrator\u2019s ability to take nostalgic comfort in something rooted in the (fictional?) past\u00a0demonstrates a blurring of the lines between past and present, and reveals that the narrator&#8217;s thoughts and memories are often the product of imagination. Despite the fact that this idyllic scene may exist in a realm far away from reality, the passage also implies that hope can be found in memory and in dreams. Whereas the narrator once constantly asked why the measure of love was loss, this idea of returning to the past (or returning to\u00a0<em>feelings<\/em>\u00a0from the past through fictional memory) has the potential to undercut the novel&#8217;s association between \u201clove\u201d and \u201closs,\u201d because our narrator has not completely lost his\/her grasp on Louise or those pre-war skies, even if they are both arguably his\/her inventions. This passage, much like the end of the novel, leaves us wanting to know what is real and what is not real, but also asks us to see that perhaps that distinction\u00a0is not so clear-cut, and that maybe \u201crealness\u201d is not even the point. Has our narrator fallen in love with a fiction? Is the past always a fictional place? Maybe love cannot be lost because love is always partly our own creation, never really entirely rooted in reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cA pre-war sky. Before the first world war there were days and days like this; long English meadows, insect hum, innocence and blue sky\u201d (161). This passage occurs when the narrator is on a train to London, daydreaming (or, rather, creating fictions) about an idyllic day with Louise. The repetition of both the words \u201csky\u201d &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2015\/02\/11\/is-love-real\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Is Love Real?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1491,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93618],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1491"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}