1984

If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert the child’s death or her own; but it seemed natural to her to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy with her arm, which was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world. --Geroge Orwell's 1984 

When Winston wakes up from his dream that convinces him he did not physically murder his mother, he remembers his mother’s gesture of the arm to protect his sister, as if by doing so it could stop her from dying. Winston also remembers the Jewish woman in the war film who, like his mother, had put her arm around her son as if it were bulletproof. He knows that this helpless movement of an arm does not alter anything, or makes any difference, but believes it to be nonetheless powerful because it possesses a natural feeling of love, sacrifice, and protection. He finally comes to realize what the Party has done to human beings.

That was what I wrote my sophomore year. I loved that line, " If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love." I still do. I have it written in my journal. Because it's so true, even in the scary world of 1984. Because love is nothing to be afraid of, because love cannot go away. We do not let love go. 

Jane Eyre

"You examine me, Miss Eyre," said he: "do you think me handsome?"

"No, sir." 

Most true is it that ‘beauty is in the eye of the gazer.’ My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth—all energy, decision, will—were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me—that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me. --Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

I read it first in Korean. And then I thought how wonderful it would be if I could read Bronte in her original language. That I knew that language was my happiest moment. That I got to know Jane again, that I got to see her strike back at Aunt Reed, meet Helen and Miss Temple, and finally love Mr. Rochester despite his imperfections was my vicarious bliss.  

Pride and Prejudice

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you” (Austen 185).

“And those the words of a gentleman!”

“Pardon me. It pains me to offend you” (Austen193).

Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough,  to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection (Austen 253).

“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure” (348).

“How could you begin?” said she.

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun” (Austen 359).

Two summers ago, I read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I read it, and without any intention, without any reason, I fell in love with it. But I was in China, with my mom and that troublemaker I call my brother. I was not staying there long, and so I read it online by an ebook. How I wanted to tear apart my Mac and highlight, annotate, rip a page to fold it in my journal you cannot imagine. Despite the headache, despite my hurting eyes from staring too long into a computer screen, I could not stop. Could not stop reading, could not stop loving Mr. Darcy.  And one day I could no longer contain that feeling that I told my brother, my silly, lovely brother, "I love Mr. Darcy." He looked at me. He looked at my mom. He looked at me again and said, "Is Mr. Darcy your boyfriend?" And then of course my mom and I both laughed. So my brother thinks my mom approves of me going out with Mr. Darcy.

To Kill A Mockingbird

 

            When he looked around, he must have thought I would start crying again, for he said, “Show you something if you won’t tell anybody.” I said what. He unbuttoned his shirt, grinning shyly.

            “Well, what?”
            “Well can’t you see it?”

            “Well no.”

            “Well it’s hair.”

            “Where?”

            “There. Right there.”

            He had been a comfort to me, so I said it looked lovely, but I didn’t see anything. “It’s real nice, Jem.”

An excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The passage I chose for Shakespearean Idol my freshman year. The page I remember exactly--225--that I would read and read and read again for that same laughter I laughed the first time. The first time I actually laughed aloud reading a book. 

The Handmaid's Tale

"But I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it, as I will hear yours too if I ever get the chance. ... By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are." -Offred/The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood