Fiqws 10105-persuasive essay PDF

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Persuasive Essay

What is love? Love is a feeling that is indescribable. Some people fall in love at first sight, others could fall in love after years. There is no specific time to fall in love. Not everyone perceives love the same way as others do and that is something, we all need to accept and understand. Mary is a beautiful princess who fell in love with a man named Pechorin. As we should know, Pechorin toys and seduces Princess Mary but that does not make her love for him Unreal. Princess Mary does see Pechorin as a fashionable hero, but that does not mean that her love for him is not genuine. Love cannot be properly defined but what does seem to be accurate is Plato’s Ladder of Love. Plato was an Ancient Greek philosopher who created this “Ladder of Love”. It all starts off by one’s physical beauty. People tend to say that they do not judge others based off their appearances and how they go for someone based off their personality and their “intellectual beauty”. But little do we know; we are always judging others by how they look. On top of that, the first impression someone gives off would be their appearances There is nothing wrong with wanting to be with someone you find attractive because naturally, we all do that. Mary from the beginning continues to misjudge Pechorin. Yet at the ball when she was troubled by the drunken man, Pechorin interfered. “I went up to the drunk, took him rather firmly by the arm and looked steadily into his eyes, asked him to go away, because, I added, the princess had long ago promised to dance the mazurka with me” (Lermontov 109). During the 19th century in Russia, the only time a woman would have been able to refuse a dance, is if she had already been “engaged” to another man. Not only did Mary take an interest in Pechorin because of his looks, but also because he saved her from that dreadful situation, she was put in. In this situation, Pechorin could even be considered as her knight and shining armor. This situation is the start of her love for Pechorin. Later, during the story, Mary risks her reputation by confessing to Pechorin. “‘Perhaps you wish me to be the first to say that I love you’ I was silent.” (133). Despite being an unmarried woman in the 19th century, Mary tells Pechorin that she loves him without saying

that she loves him. Marriage was the career goal of a Russian woman. Matches were usually arranged through parents who chose husbands from the same class or better. Once married, a wife’s duties were to take care of their husband, look after the household, and bear children. But a woman confessing their feelings to a man first is considered a shameful act which is heavily frowned upon. Mary loves Pechorin so much, she is willing to risk her honor and dignity for him. Princess Mary shows her love for Pechorin by chasing after him till the point where he straight up tells her he does not have any feelings for her. But in the situation where Pechorin has feelings or even loves Vera, he shows it differently. In the beginning of the story, Pechorin was cold and indifferent towards Vera’s feelings and would toy with her when he was pursuing Mary. But when he found out Vera was leaving; he was willing to chase after her. Princess Mary being in love with Pechorin and the way she falls in love with him is just one situation of someone falling in love. But if you really think about it, who did Princess Mary really fall in love with? Princess Mary falls in love with this guy who is loving and caring but at the end of the day, it was all an act. Pechorin acted the way he did so that he would be able to seduce her. He made her feel like he really loved her, but it was all fake. In other words, Mary fell in love with a different Pechorin. So, can we really say that Princess Mary’s love for Pechorin is genuine? Despite Pechorin’s whole act, Mary’s love for him is real. Pechorin was the only one who was dishonest, and Mary did fall in love with him starting from his looks which is something that cannot be changed. Even though, Pechorin’s motives were wrong and they were to seduce Mary and nothing more, he still saved her at the ball and that act itself, fake or not, meant a lot to Princess Mary. Pechorin “saw that she was about to swoon from fear and indignation” (109) and so he immediately rushed to Mary’s side and helped her. Benedict Carey, a science reporter for the New York Times, believes that romantic attraction is a biologically based human drive like hunger” (Carey 400). Lust is what we humans crave from each other and is something that cannot be helped. Mary’s attraction to Pushkin is only one of her reasons to being in love with him. As mentioned before, everyone has their own reasons to fall in love or why they chose to be in love. In First Love by Ivan Turgenez, Vladimir falls in love with Zenaida because he sees his

father in her. His father gives him no sort of affection just like Zinaida, yet he loves her. Now why is that? Why does Vladimir love someone who treats him in a way that others would find rather unpleasant? Usually when you love someone, you would want the affection they give you and all their attention. Clearly Vladimir enjoys the way he is being treated, which makes him a masochist. A masochist is someone who likes pain. Masochists enjoy situations where others would find it painful and even unpleasant. “Zinaida continued to play cat and mouse with me. She flirted with me, and I was all agitation and rapture; then she would suddenly thrust me away, and I dared not go near her- dared not look at her” (Turgenez 17). Zinaida continued to push Vladimir away but then get dragged back to her. He wanted to give her space but the minute she would call him over he betrays him self and obeys her. Even though Vladimir knows that he is just getting toyed with, he continues to earn for her. In “The Brain in Love”, a researcher named Pamela Regan believed that favoring others no matter their flaws can be a good thing at times. Apparently, accepting one’s flaws show that they are accepted as a person. Though Zinaida treats Vladimir not the way he would prefer to be treated, he cannot help but want her because he truly loves her despite her hurting him emotionally and physically. If we talk about Zenaida’s love interest, she is in love with Vladimir’s father, Piotr. Zinada’s reason why she is in love with Piotr is because he treats her different compared to other men. She likes the fact that he whips her and is dominant to her. The pain she receives from Piotr puts her at ease and she knows that other men would not treat her as harshly as he does. The way love is shown in this story seems to be different than the love shown in Princess Mary. Even though Mary’s reasons for being in love is different compared to Vladimir’s reason to love Zinaida or Zinaida’s reason to love Piotr, it would still be considered love because love is unique and is supposed to be weird or even different in another eye. Vladimir loves Zinada even though he knows that she is just toying with her and Zinada is in love with Piotr even though he whips her. Everyone has their own reasons to be in love with someone. It may be unusual or confusing to someone with an outside point of view but to them it is love. For those who have a set definition on what love is, try to understand that there is no certain way love is supposed to be displayed and it will differ in every relationship or even

friendship. So, Princess Mary may have fell in love with Pechorin based off his looks or his act of being a hero, but that does not change the fact that she loves him for it and there is nothing wrong with that, nor’ does that make her love for him unreal....