Mandy Len Caton shares through personal experience in her “To
Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This” her personal empathy of an almost 3 decade
old experiment. The experiment was created by the psychologist Dr. Arthur Aron
with the goal of make two fall in love with one another. Mandy speaks to a
large range of interest groups no limit to who can benefit from her words. Her purpose
for writing is not to credit the power of “there are 36” game to make people
fall in love. She claims that it is “Simple—even – to generate trust and
intimacy, the feelings love needs to thrive.” What she mean to say is you may
not be able to make a love spell but you can create the ideal environment and
setting for love to flourish.
Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle has both comparisons and
contrast to that of Mandy‘s essay. They similar both have a wide audience to
who the hopes will grasp their message and purpose. The purpose behind Brian’s
essay differs from Mandy’s because instead of talking about falling in love
Joyas talks about how to spend that love. His purpose is to awaken his audience
to the importance of how you spend your two billion heartbeats. For you can either
spend them “slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or
you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.”
The essays, "Joyas Voladoras" by Brian Doyle and “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This" by Mandy Len Catron, were both written for the general population to inform and explain their insight on love. Doyle, unlike Mandy Len Catron, talks about the heart behind love. He does this first by illustrating and comparing the hearts of hummingbirds and the hearts of blue whale. Hummingbirds have extremely fast beating small hearts that allows them to fly constantly for long distances, to fly backwards, and go to many different flowers a day. However since their hearts are so small they are extremely fragile allowing them to only live up to two years. Blue whales hearts are so big that children can walk through them. Their hearts are the biggest hearts in the world. Doyle points out that “the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles.” He then goes on to talk about the amount of chambers in a heart in several species and mentions that “we all churn inside.” His last paragraph is where the purpose comes in. Doyle proclaims that our hearts hold so much and yet we keep them closed and do not open them for anyone due to the fear of getting hurt, the fear of feeling vulnerable. The purpose of this essay is to inform the audience that it is unavoidable to love and to feel deeply and it hurts. A whale’s heart is so big that it carries so much love but it is so big that it feels all the pain that comes along with it, thus the crying and a hummingbird’s heart is so small that in order for it to live and love the life it was meant for, it must feel the pain inflicted on the heart.
ReplyDeleteMandy Len Catron on the other hand talks about the science behind love. In” To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This” Catron states that Arthur Aron, a psychologist did an experiment with two strangers making them fall in love with one another in his laboratory and after coming across this Catron then decided to give it a try. She describes the experiment between her and an acquaintance of hers. They went to a bar and asked each other the 36 questions, developed by Arthur Aron, for a few hours. After the questions they went to a bridge and stared into each other’s eyes for four silent minutes straight. She stated, “. . . the real crux of the moment was not just that I was really seeing someone, but that I was seeing someone really seeing me. Once I embraced the terror of this realization and gave it time to subside, I arrived somewhere unexpected.” Catron wasn’t feeling as vulnerable any more, as she was staring into his eyes they no longer seemed like windows to the soul but more like intriguing reality of it being an eyeball. After all of this Catron came to the conclusion that “[the] study taught me that its possible-simple, even- to generate trust and intimacy, the feelings love needs to thrive.” And that “love is a more pliable thing than we make it out to be.” The purpose of her essay is to explain that trust and intimacy can be simulated or manipulated allowing people to become closer together which can then lead to love.
Both of these essays point out the importance of having an open heart, becoming open with others. This will then allow others to become closer in relationship, more intimate. They both also talk about feeling vulnerable and trust.
"To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This" and "Joyas Voladoras" share two vastly different views on love. In the first reading the author, Mandy Lee Caton, is calculating and logical. She views love with the eyes of a scientist, perceiving falling in love as a controllable situation nothing more than hormones and psychology. In the article she writes about a date that was more of a scientific experiment than a romantic evening. Her writing is a linear story easily followed by the reader. The format is structured and chronological with the intended audience being more logical than creative, aimed towards the average 9:00-5:00 working man or busy student. Since it is written for an online news site, the message is straightforward and easy to follow but also diluted and without much substance. Possibly stemming from a culture of social media and online dating, "To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This" aims to give the reader the cheat-sheet to life they so desperately desire.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the reading from the textbook by Brian Doyle is closer to a poem than an essay. His writing is colorful and he uses extensive metaphors relating the heart to love. While Mandy Len Caton directs her article towards intellectuals, Doyle writes for the artists and romantics. Joyas Voladoras takes a melancholy tone concerning the nature of love, unlike “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This” which only describes the superficial side of love only seen in romantic comedies and on Hallmark cards. Doyle's writing doesn't provide an answer, but gives the reader something to reflect on afterwards. By writing about both animals and humans the author is showing that love and connection are universal emotions that span from hummingbirds to blue whales. Even single-celled organisms, despite having no biological heart "all churn inside." Unlike Caton who sees love as a measurable product of the human mind, Doyle sees love as an ephemeral energy that extends across all living things.
Both of these readings dealt with the concept of love. Mandy Lee Caton's piece titled, "To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This," was a weird interpretation on how love could come about in anyones lives. She discusses an older experiment where to strangers fell in love in a laboratory. By using this as evidence Caton is saying love can be a pliable thing- not spontaneous at all. Her style of writing is orderly and chronological which matches her way of thinking, in my opinion. She seems to think of science as a huge factor in finding love and even used questions from the love experiment on her own first date with someone.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand Brian Doyle uses vivid language and metaphors to try and convey his thoughts on what love is. Caton's article was directed more towards people like her- young, smart and busy, while Doyle's piece was written for that hopeless romantic and the more creative type. As Doyle discussed animals and their hearts it was obvious that he sees love as something that every living thing has and his message was to spend each heartbeat wisely. Caton sees love as something you can measure which is why these authors' messages are so different.
"To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This" is more on the scientific side and teaches the audience about falling in love and how to do it while Brian Doyle in "Joyas Voladoras" talks about the heart itself rather than focusing on falling in love. Doyle focuses on the heart beats of several different living things and how the speed of the heart beat depends of the living thing. Doyle is saying every creature has about 2 billion heart beats to spend and we get to choose how we spend them. Mandy Len Catron is talking about a scientist who made two people fall in love and how she tried it herself. They are both talking about the same area, the heart, but they are focusing on different areas of it.
ReplyDeleteIn "To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This" Mandy Len Catron talks about an old experiment that makes it possible to fall in love with somebody by asking and answering 36 questions then stare at them for four minutes. While in "Joyas Voladoras" talks about the heart itself not implying it as an action. Brian talks about how we have 2 billion heartbeats in a lifetime and we chose how to mange them either fast like a hummingbird or very slow like a whale. Mandy's implication is more psychological, while Brian's implication is applied to anything that has life.
ReplyDelete