Love and Perfectly Good Children Essay

Wislawa Szymborska expresses a negative opinion towards love and lovers in her poem â€Å"True Love.† In the beginning, the speaker questions the value of love and appears to be very bitter towards the idea. Ultimately, she cleverly uses the lovers to show how one’s perception can be changed when they are passionate about their beliefs. Initially, the speaker questions the complete happiness of couples who seem to be in ‘true love’. The speaker states, â€Å"What does the world get from two people who exist in a world of their own? / place on the same pedestal for no good reason†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (3-5). Here, the speaker sarcastically implies: What does the world or those surrounding them (so to speak) get out of them being happily ever after in their own world, while placing each other on a pedestal for no apparent reason. These questions are intended to make the reader think about true love and its significance. â€Å"What does the world get from two people who exist in a world of their own? / Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Lines 3-5) Subsequently, the speakers discouraging statements towards love is shown through the choice of words in the questions asked. The speaker questions, â€Å"True love. Is it really necessary? /†¦Perfectly good children are born without its help. /†¦It comes along so rarely.† (27, 30 and 32). Here, the speaker suggests: Is true love even really necessary? For, perfectly good people exist without being conceived through love; as it happens almost ever. These statements are meant to convince the reader as to why true love should be an afterthought as it isn’t needed to bear children and life goes on just fine without it. â€Å"True love. Is it really necessary? /†¦Perfectly good children are born without its help. /†¦It comes along so rarely.† (Lines 27, 30 and 32) Lastly, the speaker’s contradictory choice of words in the final stanza tells us that s/he ratifies the idea of true love. She professes, â€Å"Let the people who never find true love/keep saying that there’s no such thing.† (33-34). Here, the speaker affirms that despite all of her negative point-of-views previously stated, the more one doesn’t need to believe in love†¦the stronger in reality they confirm its importance. This statement tells the reader that, regardless of her disparaging tone, if one believes that true love does not exist before experiencing it or due to a bad experience, they’ve only lost their chance or more less confirmed their worst fear of true love actually existing. So from this perspective, ignorance is bliss because it is possibly better to be happy and clueless about love than to be sad because of the irreversible pain it might cause. â€Å"Let the people who never find true love/keep saying that there’s no such thing.† (Lines 33-34) Confusing is the best way to describe Szymborska’s poem. The speaker’s tone is very critical and bitter, s/he uses harsh language such as â€Å"deceptive† (Line 18), â€Å"outrage† (Line 11†) and describes love as a â€Å"plot† (Line 21) to emphasize her argument. In this way, s/he leads the reader to believe that she does not believe in, nor support the idea of true love.