The Complications in Love

Andrew Piccione

Dr. Ellis

Understanding Literature

18 November 2017

            Last month, I thought I would attend an event just in case I needed to have one in my back pocket and it finally paid off. I attended Benjamin Sommer’s event in McGuire Hall to hear about the different interpretations of Genesis and how our own beliefs can influence how we read scripture. This semester I am currently enrolled in Introduction to Theology and have lived a very religious life so this event had a spark of interest for me. In TH 201 we learned about the same things discussed in Sommer's talk so it was interesting to hear the story of genesis from a different perspective. 

            In this week’s reading of William Shakespeare’s, Twelfth Night I believe that love is the thing that makes these first two scenes so dramatic, ironic, and confusing. Duke Orsino is madly in love with a woman named Olivia who has recently lost her brother and refuses to let any man be a part of her life. Orsino is determined to persuade Olivia to fall in love with him but she constantly pushes his love aside. Orsino takes on a new servant named Cesario, but he is unaware that Cesario’s real name is Viola and is a woman dressed as a man. Viola is secretly in love with Duke Orsino even though Orsino constantly obsesses over Olivia and is unaware of his new servant’s true identity. Orsino makes his new servant Viola/Cesario deliver his love letters to Olivia to try to persuade her to allow a man to enter her life. As Viola tries to win over Olivia for Orsino, Olivia falls in love with Viola’s disguise, Cesario. There is a huge problem here because everyone is in love with each other and Viola hopes that time with unravel this mess. Viola has to painfully watch her new lover, Orsino give his all for another woman. It is hard for Viola to continue her role as his servant and hear about his love for Olivia but she decides to stay strong and remain in character as Cesario. When Orsino sees Cesario he says that he sees the look of love in his eyes. When questioned on who this new lover is, Viola remains calm and starts to describe this new lover with similar qualities to Orsino. I agree with Viola and I am excited to see how this complicated situation unravels.

            I feel that this connects to Dr. Sommer’s talk because just like Scripture, love is difficult to understand and people’s backgrounds and beliefs affects what they believe in and those who they fall in love with. In this instance love is too complicated to comprehend because all of the characters in the book either love the same person, or do not share similar feelings for one another. During Dr. Sommer’s talk he focused on the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. Sommer like other theologians believe that Adam and Eve were not the first human beings to sin. Once they ate from the tree of knowledge they were removed from the Garden of Eden and were blessed with the ability to reproduce. Once Adam and Eve ate from the tree they were filled with the knowledge and recognized the difference between and good and evil. God cursed the serpent in Genesis for tricking Eve to take the fruit from the tree. There was a break of trust between God and humans but even though Adam and Eve went against the word of God, God will always love and provide for them because he forgives all. This just shows how complicated love can be which we also see countless times in Shakespeare’s, Twelfth Night. Most would think that after God removed Adam and Eve from the garden they would be just as cursed as the serpent but God gives them the benefit of the doubt. Prior to eating from the tree, they were not filled with this new obtained knowledge about what is right and wrong. According to me, the story of Genesis is just as confusing as Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. With all the drama that occurs in both of these stories a connection can be drawn between the two because there is a feeling of secrecy and misunderstanding.

            Viola is still hiding her identity from her true love, and he has no idea who she really is. Similarly, Olivia who has now fell in love with Viola has no idea that she is actually a woman. I think that Viola is going to cause a lot of trouble in this story just how the serpent caused trouble in the story of Genesis.