english 1

In Anjula Razdan’s essay “What’s Love Got to Do with It” she talks about arranged marriages, love, and online dating. She was born and raised in Illinois by her parents who emigrated to American from India, although she was the product of an arranged marriage she grew up under the “spell of Western romantic love”. Growing up in the West, she is clearly going to have different views on the East tradition although she is Indian. In the West, arranged marriages are less likely to occur than in the East. I agree with Razdan when she states, “The very idea of an arranged marriage offended my ideas of love and liberty—to me, the act of choosing who to love represented the very essence of freedom. To take away that choice seemed like an attack not just on my autonomy as a person, but on democracy itself”. We should be able to choose who we love, seeing how we’re probably going to spend the rest of our lives with that person. (Razdan 523-527)
Computer culture has greatly changed the way people look for love. Instead of going out to social places and meeting new people, people can just go on match.com or eharmony.com and find someone; their “soul mate”. It may be non-traditional meaning no meet and greet, no first dates, but others see it as the easy way out. People are tired of finding someone just for them to break their heart, or to find out that their not the one. So, they turn to the computer to find someone for them that share the same interest and ideas as they do. In the computer culture, two people connect together on a mental level rather than physical attraction, unlike in the dating world where it’s the opposite.
The Eastern way of pairing off is similar to that of a dating service. In the dating service, the service pairs one up with who they think is the best match based off of similar interest and characteristics. The Eastern way of pairing off is by arranged marriages, where the parents pick who will marry their child, based on comparable interests; who