The meaning of love: philosophical and emotional perspectives

Love on the Fringes: The Meaning of Love in the People of Paper and Gould's Book Of Fish

For an emotion that is considered universal, it is interesting to note that love is portrayed in such a wide variety of ways in literature. In some books love is the great redeemer, in that people become better because of love and finding romantic love ensures a happy ending. In other books, love takes on a sinister quality, so that it becomes a third character in a novel, the villain who defeats a worthy hero. However, other books treat love as something complex, and as a force that can be simultaneously constructive and destructive. Both Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish and Salvador Plascencia's the People of Paper approach the subject of love with caution. The authors make it clear that they think love is an important topic, perhaps even an essential element in a full life. However, the authors are very wary of love. In both novels, love is mixed up and mashed into so many other elements that it is difficult to tell where one emotion ends and another begins. One reason for this may be because of the unusual approaches that the authors take to storytelling. Neither novel is told in a familiar straightforward narrative. Instead, both novels are highly stylistic renderings, jumping forward and backwards through time and space. They do not tell the story of a single couple and that couple's journey towards love, but instead talk about love on the fringes of a story. By talking about love as something that is on the fringes of the main story, both Flanagan and Plascencia capture the essence of love: something that is always present, constantly sought, and that influences every action, but that is rarely the main subject of a story.

For example, the actual plot in Gould's Book of Fish has nothing to do with love. The narrator, who is quickly revealed to be an unreliable source, takes on the task of recreating a book of fish that was initially created by a prison inmate. The project quickly comes to consume the narrator's life. However, it is not a book about fish or even a book about fish. Instead, the book of fish is a carefully constructed metaphor for the human condition. In its broadest sense, the book talks about the annihilation of aborigines. In its more narrow sense, the book discusses the relationship between love and other emotions.

For example, when discussing his painting of fish, the narrator talks about how he hopes these paintings will make people contemplate meaning. He says, "I would fill a great London gallery with these transmuted images, so that people who came to view my paintings would soon find themselves swimming in a strange ocean they could not recognize & they would feel a Great Sorrow about who they were & a Great Love for who they were not & it would be all mixed up and clear at the same time, & they would never be able to explain any of it to anybody" (Flanagan, p.385). This reveals how the idea of a Great Love is consuming for people, but is also something which people do not want to deal with directly. Instead, the narrator acknowledges that such topics would make people uncomfortable. He says:

But such things aren't what people wanted in paintings, they wanted their animals dead & their wives dead, they wanted something that helped them to classify & judge & keep the dead animals & dead wives & soon-to-die children in their place inside the prison of the frame, & this business of smuggling hope might make them wonder, might be the axe that smashed the frozen sea within, might make the dead wake and swim free. And that wasn't a painting worth a twopence, but something more criminal than stealing (Flanagan, p.385-386).

In other words, people want to be able to neatly compartmentalize emotions without pondering what role those emotions actually play in their lives.

This is further demonstrated by the narrator's attitude towards Billy Gould. The narrator says, "Dear, sweet, silly Billy Gould and his foolish tales of love, so much love that it is not possible now, and was not possible then, for him to continue" (Flanagan, p.2). That phrase neatly sums up how most people feel about the foolishly romantic. People who choose to live and die for love end up dying, because love cannot be the goal of a life. Moreover, even if love is the goal of someone's life, there is something impossible about sustaining a storybook-quality love. Speaking of a woman who left him, the narrator talks about her going to another man, and, while that obviously saddens him, he consoles himself with the idea that he "never had to watch our love turn to that non-colour, white" (Flanagan, p.115). Contrast that with how he speaks of Billy Gould's foolish tales of love. However, there is something disengenous about the narrator's dismissal of Billy Gould. After all, when speaking of himself, he describes his feelings for a woman who does not return his affection and acknowledges that he "had lost something fundamental and had acquired in its place a curious infection: the terrible contagion of unrequited love" (Flanagan, p.115). What reader can fail to identify with the all-consuming feeling of loving someone who does not return that feeling? Moreover, who, when they have fallen out love with that person, does not regret having spent their time that way? That almost makes it appear that the narrator thinks of love as having little value.

However, other statements make it clear that the narrator does not think that love is worthless. Instead, he seems to have an almost puritanical approach to love and fidelity. Referencing Voltaire, who fell in love but continued to bed other women, the narrator says, "too late Voltaire realised what he risked losing, & returned to witness his great love dying in childbirth- which is why, after causing such misery, it was only right & proper he ended up an empty-headed perfume bottle used to bring women to pleasure ever after" (Flanagan, p.383). This shows a desire to have love honored and cherished when found, and a knowledge that a great love is rarity that should be cherished.

Like Flanagan, Plascencia takes a very conflicted approach to love. Saturn, throughout much of the Paper People, Plascencia equates love with sex in a way that is very dismissive of any emotions underlying love or lovemaking. In Saturn's talks with his grandfather, his grandfather equates both love and respect with sexual behavior. He cautions Saturn on how to make love to a woman he loves. Saturn internalizes this lesson, and feels that, "after proper love there were symptoms: a sweaty forehead; the limbs sore and bruised; a philistine rawness on the foreskin; and a nearly insatiable and debilitating appetite, a hunger that had been specially invented for postcoital love, a hunger that never came to Saturn" (Plascencia, p.125). Moreover, it is impossible to wholly separate the possibility of procreation from sex, and yet Plascencia reveals how a small behavior reveals Cameroon's feelings towards Saturn: "And though Cameroon had said she loved Saturn, whispering it over and over while underneath him- never when on top- she went into the washroom and sat on the bidet. She tossed a small log into the boiler and when the warm water spouted from the faucet in a low voice she spouted the bidet prayer" (Plascencia, p.126).

However, to suggest that Plascencia is dismissive of the power of love or suggests that love is nothing more than sex is to ignore the whole point of the novel. A pacifist, who is called to action in Saturn's war, remembers his days of growing up a boy during the war. He talks about "writing desperate love letters on sidewalks in the shape of bloodied snow angels" (Plascencia, p.109). He agrees to participate in Saturn's war because Saturn's war is, at its core, about love.