Parable of the Four Poster

Love equals Pain

Love is something we all used to dream about as a child and have grown to fear as an adult. Every person feels differently about love depending on where and when love is taken place in an individual. Love can be sweet and tasty like a strawberry candy or love can be bitter and painful like a droplet of liquid medicine. In “Parable of the Four-Poster”, Erica Jong describes how hiding true love cannot only hurt two individuals but it can also spread to the people among them.

Perhaps when asking one to define what love is, they will take as much time as possible to define in their own ways. Most definitely love is not something that we all can explain and give a definition of. Unfortunately, Jong expresses love as something that is not much of happiness but rather sad and depressed. She starts out “Because she wants to touch him, / she moves away. / Because she wants to talk to him, / she keeps silent. / Because she wants to kiss him, / she turns way/ & kisses a man she does not want to kiss” (lis 1-7). Immediately, we know that this is not a good situation of where love should come across. Thousands of people did this before. When one loves the other, he or she is afraid to tell his or her feelings therefore it lead to much confusion. When we sit on this side of the table and look over on the other side where the one we love shines among other people, but we’re too afraid to let that person know. In our minds we think; will he or she think the same way as we think of him or her, or it is an embarrassment once we find out that we’re making a fool out of ourselves? It is a one-on-one risk, however, most people decided to keep everything inside and let whatever happen happens.

Most of the time love doesn’t come around easily. If we miss the opportunity that is given we might not have a second chance. When we give wrong signals to the opponent they might think and do things that are basically opposite of what we wanted at the beginning. Obviously the woman that Jong describes in her poem was deeply in love with a man that she decided not express her feeling to. Because of her mislead actions; she drove him away from her. “He watches/ thinking she does not want him. / He listens/ hearing her silence. / He turns away/ thinking her distant/ & kisses a girl he does not want to kiss” (lis 8-14). As we see two people who madly in love with each other, cannot have a happy ending for a simple reason.

When one makes first mistake in a relationship, it is important to face and try to solve it. If they don’t, eventually both will make bigger mistakes that they will never have a chance to come back and fix it. As shows in the poem, both victims head off with a two new relationships that