Theme of Love in Love after Love and The Third Bank of The River
Love is a concept often debated and often perceived in many ways. Although, despite its popular romantic perception, love can refer to a variety of things. The two selections from this unit, “Love after Love” and “The Third Bank of The River,” convey two different types of love. Self-love and the love for family.
In “Love after Love,” Derek Walcott expresses the theme of self-love through his descriptions of “greeting yourself.” Throughout the poem, he talks about the other-self being deprived of love. However, it isn’t clear why until the third stanza. “All your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart” is a good example. After these lines, the reader can now realize that this poem’s targeting audience are for those that don’t stop to love themselves before they can love another. The next line of the stanza says “Take down the love letters from the bookshelf.” This is telling the reader to let go of their love for this person so they can love themselves. This line also makes way towards the fact that the other person is probably a romantic partner, not someone that is loved in a different way.
In “The Third Bank of The River,” João Guimarães Rosa expresses the theme of love for one's family through the thoughts and actions of the boy in his story. Throughout the story, the young boy loses his father and his grief makes him delusional. The thought that his father is still out on the river in his boat drives him to stay in his family’s home, even after everyone else has left. It is later found that the boy would even stay there in death, as his spirit would then continue as his father’s did, rowing down the river. Although it’s never said why he still thought his father was out there even after he grew older, it’s seen through the story that his grief had not only made him delusional with his thoughts, but it would seem that he also believed to see his father when he was younger. A good example would be “Then I saw the boat, far off, alone, gliding almost imperceptibly on the smoothness of the river. Father was sitting in the bottom of the boat. He saw me but he did not row towards me or make any gesture.” These few sentences were the beginning of his lifetime of grief and guilt. “And I’m begging forgiveness, begging, begging” the boy said in his old age as he saw his father one last time in spirit. Throughout his life, he not only denied the craziness that consumed him, but he denied it in a way that he defined the term to suit his denial. “No one called anybody crazy, for nobody is crazy. Or maybe everybody,” he would say.
The theme of love that these selections convey may sound completely different, but some similarities lie within. These selections treat love very importantly, so important that it not only changes the main character(s) emotionally but also mentally. Even though in “Love after Love” Derek Walcott expresses the need for one to let go of the love for another due to it damaging the reader’s self-love, you can sense in the poem there is a feeling of grief similar to that of “The Third Bank of The River.” From the last line of the third stanza to the last line of the fourth, it is shown that the reader is dwelling on the memories of a love they had. “Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life,” Derek says to draw the reader away from grieving over the love they once had in hopes they’d give it back to themselves. While it may not have made them delusional as it did the boy in “The Third Bank of The River,” you can tell it definitely made an impact.
