In the film, The Little Mermaid, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, Ariel makes a deal with the devil (Ursula) to get a shot at meeting her true love. Her love, Prince Eric, is a human and they first interact after Ariel saves him from drowning when his ship crashes. The deal Ariel makes with Ursula is that she trades her voice for a pair of human legs, to have an opportunity to become human by temporarily transforming her into one so that she may earn love. What Ariel finds out quickly is that dancing with the devil is a slippery slope. Even though everything ended working out for Ariel, I question how much are humans willing to sacrifice to earn love?
We see that Ariel was willing to lose her voice and never see her family and friends again to have an opportunity at gaining love. This was also present in The Mistake, by Martín Kohan. The main character was willing to walk miles in a river with no water to go to his love. However, what he didn’t realize was that eventually the water would return and he consequently died. We will also see it in the short story, Sea Story by A.S. Byatt. Even though Harold doesn’t kill himself over his love, he devotes lots of time and goes far into the ocean to drop off a message in the bottle to hopefully reach his love. He does all of this after realising that his love gave him a fake address and email. He was so desperate for obtaining love that he sent a shot into the dark hoping it would hit. Overall I think humans are willing to sacrifice anything for something they believe in like love.
Austin, I agree with your point that people are willing to sacrifice anything for something they believe in such as love. I liked the examples you used in the film and the readings to support your argument. In your post, you made it clear that the characters make sacrifices for love. However, I do find it difficult to understand the reason why you use the evidence in your post. I feel like you could analysis your evidence in more depth and explain how they help support your answer. For example, you used several pieces of evidence that demonstrate sacrifice for love, but I do not see how they make your question controversial. I would suggest you elaborate on the idea about the level of sacrifice they put forth for their loved ones. As you mentioned in your post, Harold’s sacrifice for his love is not as drastic as the one from the short story The Mistake. This is because Harold released a love letter in the middle of the ocean while the narrator in The Mistake fully attempts to walk through a river and in doing so he ends up drowning. Furthermore, we can see that there is a difference between how much each character was willing to sacrifice for their love in each respective stories.
As I previously stated, I like the evidence you use to support your argument; however, I suggest you use these events to distinguish the level of sacrifice in response to your question of how much are people willing to give up for love. I would also suggest that you use the fact that Ariel’s father sacrificed his powers to let his daughter be free from Ursula. The reason I would incorporate this part of the movie in your post is to show a different kind of sacrifice for love. Ariel’s father sacrificed his own daughter for the purpose to see her happy. In essence, this evidence shows a sacrifice for the family which is different from Ariel’s sacrifice for the love of Prince Eric. Another reason why I would suggest you use this evidence is that you could compare the sacrifice between the three characters Ariel, Prince Eric and Triton. Ariel gave up her enchanting voice to be a human in order to chase after Prince Eric. Triton gives up his power as King to save his daughter from the grasps of Ursula. Prince Eric really does not have much to sacrifice in the movie for the love of Ariel. The viewer can clearly see that both Ariel and her father are willing to sacrifice more than Prince Eric. This evidence would help support your argument because it demonstrates that although everyone is willing to sacrifice anything for something they believe some may go to more extreme measures than others.
I agree with your argument and I enjoy how you were able to connect it to multiple works we have studied. As we all know, love can be a impenetrable force that makes people do crazy things. I also believe you bring up a great point— how the theme of sacrifice seems to be recurrent. All of these characters are giving up something in hope to gain in the future. What we do have to take into account, however, is the fact that all of these sources are fictional. It can be a great jump to compare this kind of evidence to real life. Can this actually be applied to our world today? In this day and age, people are becoming more independent and self-sufficient on their own. This may be due to societal norms drastically changing and new technological advances. Many people don’t believe they need love to be successful in life. Also, there is the fact that, today, humans tend to be more self-oriented and selfish. This takes into effect that many will be unwilling to sacrifice or change their lives for the sake of someone else’s. Also, the concept of “true love” has been manipulated. New technological applications allow for this to happen. An example would be the reality television show, “The Bachelor”, where a man is supposed to find his “true love” by dating various women.
While it most definitely can happen, it is very rare for a couple to have the “story book ending” that we see in many of these fictional works. These pieces are great examples for the idea of sacrificing for love, but I think if you are going to apply this argument to the real world you are going to need to take into account what is actually happening. Maybe you can restructure your argument to focus on how the theme of sacrifice manifests within just the works. When you do this, you take a very broad and seemingly unanswerable question, and focus it to your main point.
I love the story of The Little Mermaid. I love writing and describing the characters I read about in each book. My skills come from https://edubirdie.com/essay-maker because this service has experts who inspire me and show me what a good paper looks like. The site is an essay maker with excellent information for students and literature lovers.