Adjust Your Work Cited Accordingly!

¶ … adjust your Work Cited accordingly!

Jon Pahl observes the shopping mall as something fulfilling a human need in his essay, "The Mall as a Sacred Place." The mall is very much like a church in many of the ways it operates. For example, it brings diverse people together for a particular purpose. The mall is a "sensual feast, if not an assault" (Pahl notes. In malls, we experiences water, light, trees, food, music, words, and other bodies, an experience intended to cause us to feel "dazed, disoriented, and, finally, lacking something" (xxx). This leads to a sense of vulnerability, which forces the soul to sell itself to the "lowest bidder" (xxx). Malls "appear to be something more than an ordinary place," (Pahl states." The use of light and vegetation coupled with the mall's promise of "unity, love, love, happiness" make them sacred places. Society has driven malls to this states, Pahl notes, since churches in America do not seem to be fulfilling the average American's need to feel as if they belong to a community.

Pahl makes a valid point with his comparison. I never considered the mall this way but his perspective is compelling. I do not agree with it, however; the mall was created to sell merchandise and I hardly think the message of the church can be compared to this on every level. Just because a church does not have a social function every day from 10 a.m. To 9 p.m., it does not mean the church is failing the people. Community must exist outside the physical building of a church to be effective. Comparing "business hours" of a mall to the time people spend listening to a sermon is a misleading, therefore, ruining its validity.

Stephanie Coontz's essay, "The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love," and love is enlightening, considering we rarely think about marrying for anything other than love (save the few who marry only for money). In our ideal world, love is a part of the equation, and Coontz open our eyes to how it has not always been this way. Even when we think of courtly love, we must realize that literature has romanticized it to a saccharin-sweet point. To be married and have it be considered quite normal to look outside that marriage for love and intimacy seems backwards. Coontz also points out that too much love between spouses was frowned upon in Greek and Roman societies as well as some Catholic and Protestants. Spouses who loved each other too much were committing "idolatry" (xxx). However, most cultures frowned upon placing love at the "center of marriage" (xxx). Love was not necessary and in best-case scenarios, love would eventually develop between husband and wife. Coontz's ability to trace this attitude toward love and marriage through the centuries, the age of Enlightenment and the Glorious Revolution is amazing because our society is so different. Especially in America, where freedom and the pursuit of happiness are at the top of the list for personal rights, marriage for anything other than love seems self-destructive in the long run. However, this is radical in comparison to how marriage has functioned and survived in the past.