Love in Allisons Bastard Out of Carolina :: Bastard Out of Carolina Essays

be write outd in Allisons Bastard stunned of Carolina   Love is a word, a signifier, tied to many meanings, all diametric in context, cultures, and ideologies. Love is used numerous ways in Allisons Bastard Out of Carolina, by many characters. In the character of fancy up, love is a disconnected thing, always changing, as Bone uses it to fit her life on the fly. In relation to parental love, Bone wants Daddy Glen to love her. However, early in the book, Bones conception of love is that of a child, obviously. On page 52, she says, I valued him to love us. I wanted to be able to love him. I wanted him to pick me up gently and tell Mama over again how much he loved us all. This imagination of love is simple, involving hugs, smiles, and friend line of reasoningss, the strain of love Bone gets from Anney. However, as Bones relationship with Glen changes, so does her perception of love. On page 108, Glen asks Bone, Dont you know how I love you? Bone thinks to herself, No, I d id not know. This is near the beginning of Bones confusion about love, what it means, and what it does. At the succession he asks her, he is molesting her. It is no wonder that Bone was confused, having love uttered simply, from her mother, and sexually (if indeed it is love) from Glen. This confusion leads bone to question the idea of love, and to look elsewhere for it, perhaps to compare. Love, she finds, is a prominent idea in the Southern Baptist church. Bone is enthralled with the black and white of Christianity, the definitive line drawn between good and evil, because she abide see where the love is, and what it does. She believes she can see that other people truly love one another, and accept this, she thinks the has a better grasp on the abstract idea of love. However, as Bone later discovers, love is abstract, and being abandoned by her mother, she never truly figures it out. The problem within, for Bone, is that love is a conceptual idea, and that, really, it means som ething different to each person. Not only that, but love is used by others, in ways that may not suit anyone elses conceptions of the idea. So when Anney insists to Bone and everyone else that Glen loves her and her girls, Bone tends, of course, to believe her, and thus the idea of love is transferred to how Glen treats Bone.