Real and Unreal
Real and UnrealBy: Thomas Davidson
What�s Ideally Real? What is ideal and what is real? We seem to have this idealized concept of what love is supposed to be like according to the way society has molded us. Perhaps these ideals are more about the self than they are about a relationship between two people. We want to feel loved, and when we get that love from another person we become determined to secure that feeling. By securing these feelings we lean towards controlling that relationship. However, control is merely a way of fabricating and disguising reality. And by manipulating reality in this way we create an ideal relationship stemming mainly from our own selfish vain imaginings. Literature gives us many examples of these sorts of ideals while at the same time showing us how reality eventually prevails these conceptions. Whether the stories portray an ideal relationship or a realistic one, is dependant on the author. If the author chooses to place his/her characters in an ideal relationship, it must be perfectly ideal. Ideal does not necessarily translate to a positive viewpoint, though. It could mean the perfectly wrong relationship. It just implies that the characters are both dedicated to their relationship not being positive. In a realistic relationship, there are constant factors interfering with the relationship, and opinions of the other change and vary throughout the work. Claire Kemp, in her short story, �Keeping Company� gives an example of a relationship that is controlled by the male. He suppresses his wife. Perhaps the cause of this is his own insecurity with the relationship. Securing her love for him has taken precedent over him providing love for her. The couple�s current residence is located in a gay community therefore eliminating the possibility of her being disloyal to him. She is handicapped from being who she really is due to her husband�s inadvertent denial of reality. She has been brainwashed not to question him and to be fully obedient. Thus suppressing her from her own reality. �William is building a wall. To make certain he is in his rights, he engages a souvenir to determine the exact boundaries of our land� (Kemp 203) Looking at love from another perspective, we find the relationship between a father and a son to have the same conflicts between the ideal and real. August Wilson wrote the play �Fences� during the brewing of the civil rights movement in the United States. The main character in the play, Troy, grew up surrounded by poverty and racial prejudice therefore impairing what he believed could have been success in his life. Likewise, his son, Corey, grew...
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