Mr. Kasik
A1
Due: March 29, 2012
A Fairytale Called Teenage Love
When teenagers in high school fall in love, it is probably the most unrealistic and distorted kind of love. They are completely oblivious to the idea and true meaning of it, and it is such a difficult concept to understand that once they think they have found it, they believe it is true and real. High school couples are ignorant and stubborn. Some have no idea what lies ahead of them and some refuse to accept the fact that there is more to life than just high school and their high school relationships. Teenage couples always have that longing to be with each other, causing them to have a constant physical attachment, which in reality is impossible. They also create some of the most unrealistic fairytale promises, saying that they will stay together forever and overcome any obstacle early on. For these reasons, the entire idea of teenage love is practically a myth, because the chances of them being Happily Ever After are nil. Most high school teens have not fully matured and are not at a stable mental state to make well-thought out decisions. They are under the impression that high school is the most important part of their lives. They do not know what they want to make out of their lives and many cannot grasp the idea of having decades and decades ahead of them. High school is all they have, all they know, and they are completely oblivious to the outside world. All of these unknowns make it nearly impossible to find true love in high school because they would not know what to be looking for. This problem relates to J. Hillis Miller 's literary criticism of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pubill 2
Prufrock,” where he mentions how Prufrock “remains imprisoned in his own subjective space, and all his experience is imaginary” (Poets). High-schoolers have been imprisoned in the same environment for four years, and their illusions of love have given them a
Citations: Ackerman, Diane. “Plate: The Perfect Union” in Schlib Carver, Raymond. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” in Schlib Marlowe, Christopher. “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” in Schlib Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress” in Schlib Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1965. Schlib, John and John Clifford. Making Arguments about Literature. Boston: St. Martines, 2005. Szymborska, Wislawa. “True Love” in Schlib