The Chemistry of Love that Forms Human Bonds
The "Chemistry" of Love that forms Human Bonds
There are two different kinds of “LOVE”, passionate and compassionate. Passionate love is where you are attracted to the person and to the way that they make you feel. Compassionate love is where you love the person for who they are. In the essay “Grandma”, Gerald, the main character, gradually begins to love his great-grandmother after starting out on rough terms. In the essay “Love: the right chemistry” Anastasia Toufexis talks about the chemical aspect of love and why people fall in love. In this paper I am going to compare and contrast the two essays and these two different concepts of love.
In the essay, “Grandma” by Gerald Haslam, Gerald a young boy at the time, meets his great-grandmother for the first time when she moves in with his family. She was known as “Grandma” to the family. The relationship between the two does not start off very well. Gerald tries to communicate with her, but she only speaks Spanish to him. Grandma is very bitter because she only wants to live in the country were she grew up, not in the city where Gerald’s home was. Soon Gerald finds himself hiding from Grandma because he is afraid of her until one day she speaks rudely to him in English, “Oh so you want some candy. Go to the store an’ buy some.” When Gerald reacts with bursts of tears, Grandma comforts him with kind words and a pat on the head. This event changed Gerald’s feelings towards his Grandma. They soon became very close as they learned to love each other. One day Grandma fell and broke her hip and soon after died. This was very hard on Gerald but when his family wanted to bury her in the city, he stood up to them and said that she needed to be buried in the country where she wanted to be.
In the essay “Love the Right Chemistry”, by Anastasia Toufexis, she talks about the chemical side of love. She states that approximately 4 million years ago man developed the notion of romantic love, when male and female partnerships were formed to help raise their offspring. This was the first evidence of “love”. Anastasia talks about the “4-year-itch”, where after four years of marriage couples tend to breakup. If the couple has another child...