Most relationships clearly have a broken point. When this happens, and one partner is not ready to give up and walk away, a separation provides a “pause button” so that both partners can receive valuable information about whether or not to continue their relationship. Sacrificing relationships to do what's best for them can be difficult and upsetting. In the works of "The Love of my Life" by T. Coraghessan Boyle, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne and "Eveline" by James Joyce the theme of sacrificing relationships is depicted. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayT. Coraghessan Boyle, born Thomas John Boyle, author of "The Love of my Life", was born in 1948 in Peekskill, New York. Boyle, a self-described "spoiled punk," had no intention of becoming a writer and never dreamed that he would one day earn a major in literature. Initially, he wanted to major in music, aspiring to become a saxophonist at the State University of New York at Potsdam. After enrolling in a creative writing course, he began composing plays and short stories. Boyle continued to write short stories after graduation, between his day job as a high school teacher and his nightly drug and alcohol binges. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974 and his Ph.D. degree in 19th-century British literature in 1977. The PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/West Literary Award, the National Academy of Arts and the Letters Award: these are some of the critically acclaimed awards Boyle has earned. Most of Boyle's novels and short stories explore "the appetites, joys, and addictions" of the Baby Boom generation. Additionally, his fiction explores the unpredictability of nature and the “toll human society unwittingly takes on the environment.” What is meant by this is that Boyle's short stories and novels were about the unpredictable events that can happen in a person's life. Boyle's "The Love of my Life" is based on a real event that occurred in November 1996. At the age of nineteen, Amy S. Grossberg and Brian C. Peterson were accused and convicted of infanticide, the crime of murdering a child within one year after birth. The newborn was wrapped and thrown in a dumpster shortly after giving birth in a motel room (Boettger). Written in 2000, "The Love of My Life" is a short story about two characters, China and Jeremy, who conceive a child during a camping trip, even though they both wish to avoid pregnancy, during the summer before their freshman year at college. . The story begins with two high school students, China and Jeremy, who couldn't separate and the amount of love they had for each other. They "wore each other like a pair of socks." This comparison means that the two characters were together wherever they went. Both seniors had bright futures: China would attend Binghamton and Jeremy would attend Brown. In the summer, the two main characters planned a camping trip. At this point, the focus is on China and Jeremy's relationship and how strong it seems. They always said “I love you” to each other. For them they didn't have this feeling, “no triumph, no exaltation – it was like being immortal and invincible, like floating”ю During the camping trip, Cina conceived a child. She decides to keep the baby; however, he refuses to seek medical attention. Realizing that it would be too much work to keep the baby, he proceedsthen telling Jeremy to "get rid of it", meaning get rid of the baby and hope to never see him again. The next day, Jeremy was arrested and China was reportedly taken into custody after being released from a community hospital. Towards the end of this story, China testifies against Jeremy in a court case. China had to sacrifice her relationship with Jeremy to get out of the situation, and so it was difficult for her since she loved Jeremy. In his short story "The Love of My Life," Boyle studies teenage relationships by placing a young high school couple in an intense situation. At the beginning of the story, he plays a typical young high school couple. China and Jeremy, the main characters, are so in love that they can't bear to be separated. They are constantly together, wearing “each other like a pair of socks.” They also constantly exchange kisses, even if they've only been apart for a few minutes. Both characters have an idealized notion of what love truly is and, therefore, think that the love they feel is real. Ultimately, China realizes that she must sacrifice her relationship with Jeremy to defend herself. Boyle reveals the difference between real and idealized love and how love can be torn apart through the chronological order of events. While it's clear that the topic of this story is teen pregnancy, the underlying themes are about relationships falling in and out of love. Author of “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” John Donne was born in 1572 in London, England, during a time of theological and political turmoil for both England and France. He was known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets which also included George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell and John Cleveland. The term “metaphysical poets” was a term created by Samuel Johnson, an 18th-century English essayist, poet, and philosopher, and they were known for their ability to surprise the reader and convince new perspectives through “paradoxical imagery, subtle argumentation, inventive syntax , and images from art, philosophy and religion” using a presumption (Jbenka). Raised in a Roman Catholic family, Donne experienced religious discrimination against Catholics from the Anglican majority in England. He studied at Oxford and Cambridge universities as a teenager; however, he did not graduate because doing so meant signing up to the Thirty-Nine Articles, the doctrine that defined Anglicanism. At the age of 20 he studied law at Lincoln's Inn. Two years later, after his younger brother died in prison, Donne succumbed to religious pressure and joined the Anglican Church. He wrote most of his "love lyrics, erotic verses and some sacred poems" in the 1590s, creating two major works: Satires and Songs and Sonnets. Donne secretly married Anne More in 1601. Disapproving of the marriage, Donne's father-in-law had Donne briefly imprisoned. Donne wrote the poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” in 1611, shortly before leaving on a long journey from his home in England to France and Germany (Shmoop Editorial Team). It was then published in 1633, two years after Donne's death, in Songs and Sonnets. This poem is one of Donne's most celebrated and significant poems in which he declares his ideal of spiritual love that transcends the ordinary and inferior love of others based on physicality (Changizi). Donne probably composed his four “Farewell Poems” in Songs and Sonnets while he was married to Anne More but separated from her due to his frequent travels. These poems present love as intense and passionate, sometimes even tender, an emotion strengthened by the speaker's separation from the woman he loves. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,”Donne writes on the occasion of his separation from his wife for a long period of time. The poem comforts the speaker's lover during their temporary separation, asking that they "part calmly and silently, without tears or protests." Even if they separate due to circumstances, their love will remain pure and true. In the first five stanzas, Donne states that the souls of Donne and her lover are united by a love of a spiritual nature. The last four stanzas conclude the physical separation between Donne and his lover. Since the separation does not change the unity of their souls, Donne says there is no reason to mourn. To support his argument, he provides two comparisons. The first support is that their souls do not separate but undergo "an expansion, / As gold beats to airy thinness". His second support states that even though their souls are logically two, they are united like the feet of a compass. The soul of her lover is the “fixed foot” that occupies the center of an imaginary circle. If Donne's soul, the other foot of the compass, moves outward, her lover's soul "leans and listens to it." The exploration of this metaphor results in one of the best-known concepts in English poetry. The feet of the compass function as the “objective correlative” for both souls. John Donne's poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” uses many metaphors and allusions to show the power of the love between him and his lover and how strong it is. Although Donne leaves, he believes their love is strong enough to withstand the separation. The love between him and his lover is compared to various symbolic things, such as gold that can stretch thinly without breaking and twin compasses. Like gold, he believes that the one soul they have will stretch out and take over the distance between the two. Compasses help sailors navigate the ocean and, metaphorically, help two lovers remain united, regardless of distance. Even on the compass, no matter how many times the moving foot makes one revolution around the circle, the two legs eventually come together again. One of the most influential and innovative writers of the 20th century, James Joyce was the author of the short story "Eveline" in his collection Dubliners. Joyce was born in a suburb of Dublin. He attended a Jesuit school, Belvedere College and University College Dublin. After graduation, Joyce moved to Paris. After 1904 he returned to Ireland for some time. He lived in Trieste with his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and their children. During World War I the family lived in Zurich, moving to Paris after the war and then to southern France before the Nazi invasion. Joyce died while living in Zurich. Joyce's first publication in 1907 was the poetry collection Chamber Music. When Joyce sent a revised first chapter of Portrait, along with the manuscript of his short story collection Dubliners, to Ezra Pound, who helped Joyce support him financially, Pound arranged for Portrait to be published in the modernist magazine The Egoist between 1914 and 1915 . the short story collection, Dubliners, had been delayed by years of arguments with printers over its contents, but was also published in 1914. James Joyce's "Eveline" reflects how Eveline felt between her life at home rooted in the past and the possibility of a new life being married to Frank abroad. At one point, Eveline seems content to leave her harsh life, declaring, “She has to run away! Frank would save her,” but the next moment she feels worried about keeping her promise to her deceased mother to “keep the house together as long as she could”). By withholding the letters she had written to her father and brother, Eveline reveals her inability to let go of her close bond with her family, despite her father's abuse andthe absence of his brother. Eveline clings to the most pleasant memories of the past and imagines what others would like her to do or what he will do for her. In her eyes, Eveline sees Frank as a savior, saving her from her situation at home. He finds himself between the duty to stay at home and that of taking care of his family, the future and new experiences. With the two options, Eveline is unable to choose whether or not to stay at home or leave with Frank, her lover. The threat of repeating her mother's life shifts Eveline's choice to leave with Frank and embark on a new phase of her life. When listening to a street organ, Eveline remembers another street organ she had played the night before her mother's death. Eveline then tells herself not to repeat her mother's life which was full of “commonplaces.”sacrifices that end in final madness,” but she does exactly that (Joyce 5). Despite the fact that Frank will drown her in his new life, the real reason why Eveline decides to stay and not follow Frank to the ship is her addiction to home. Difficult and upsetting, she sacrifices her relationship with Frank to take care of her family at home. In the short story “Eveline”, the relationship between Eveline's past and her future was explored by examining her attitude towards life in Dublin. Joyce was interested in this relationship because, like Ireland, which had a habit of looking to the past and clinging to it, it needed to progress to bring it up to date with the present. He was also interested in seeing Ireland “brought into the modern world”. Dubliners had faced many difficulties at the time. In “Eveline,” Joyce describes Eveline's existence as “boring, uninteresting, and even oppressive” with her father as the main focus on the idea that the older generation should “abandon themselves” if New Ireland is to change itself. The positive aspects of older Ireland represented in “Eveline” were Eveline's mother and her older brother Ernest, although both were dead and gone from her life. Starting a new life in a new country was the best way for Eveline to “shake off the musty old air” of Ireland. “It was a long time ago,” and everything has changed, yet Eveline sits down and casts her mind back to the happy moments of her childhood. One of the possible reasons why Eveline did not want to leave her home was the “nostalgia for the old Ireland” represented by her childhood memories, even if those family members had died. Another possible reason could be that Eveline wanted to fulfill her duty of caring for her family at home. Although, due to Joyce's masterwork of writing, it is difficult to say exactly why Eveline chose to stay until the end of the story. In the works of “The Love of my Life” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne and “Eveline” by James Joyce the theme of sacrificing the relationship between them and their significant other was depicted. Although, in each work, there are many differences. In “The Love of My Life”, China realizes that she has to stand up for herself and get out of the trouble she is in, even though Jeremy is “the love of her life”). To do this, he had to change the story and testify against Jeremy in their court case. China told his lawyer that he "acted alone" and also took a polygraph. Jeremy was shocked, appalled and confused as to why China would do this. In the poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” Donne had to sacrifice her relationship with her lover in order for her to continue what she needed to do. His lover was also upset and the trial was difficult for both him and his lover. In “Eveline,” Eveline sacrifices her relationship with Frank, and Frank, at the end of the.