A Love of Souls Alone is for Fairytales

In one of the most eloquent descriptions of love known to Western civilization, Plato's Symposium declares, "Each [man]...is always looking for his other half...And when [he] meets with his other half...the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other's sight...even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together...For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of...the soul" (Plato). This so-called union of the souls, unobstructed by any other factors, however, is a highly idealized concept that rarely if ever brings two humans together in real life. Complementary personalities, common religious beliefs, similar hobbies, child-rearing philosophies, and pure lust more often characterize real life relationships. But as mundane as these qualities may be, they are essential to the longevity of a relationship.

Nobler characteristics---trust, honesty, altruism, and compassion--- do in part form the foundations for a successful relationship but they alone cannot overcome the many hardships that life throws at a couple. They, along with an optimistic yet pragmatic tact, may but in love there are no guarantees. At the very least, these struggles, while frustrating, keep a couple's dynamic interesting---at least for the audience gazing at the crashing waves in the fishbowl---because it helps them escape routine. In Dael Orlandersmith's Yellowman, Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, Neil LaBute's Fat Pig, and Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter, couples' conflicting expectations and lack of thorough introspection complicate their romantic relationships, much to the delight of the audience.

The relationship between Yellowman's Alma and Eugene demonstrates how divergent expectations and a sub par level of self-knowledge can affect a relationship's outcome. Alma is more realistic than Eugene, a sunny thinker who often forgets or ignores the facts. He dreams about Alma (Orlandersmith 17), despite the black community's taboo about the dark-skinned dating the light-skinned. Meanwhile, Alma is much more reserved about her feelings and reigns in her passions for matters of pride. She does not fully commit her heart to Eugene because she is afraid of becoming as desperate as her mother, who fails to keep any man in her life. As a young girl, Alma saw her mother chase after her father into the road after he abandoned the family for the second time: "She lay on the hot tar road panting---panting like a dog" (Orlandersmith14). After witnessing her mother's humiliation, Alma promises never to demean herself for a man. This ambition explains why in high school Alma admires Gene from a safe distance rather than actively pursuing him. "I want Gene but I'm not going to dog-pant-pant like a dog," she states (Orlandersmith 19). Eugene, as a light-skinned black man, has more to lose socially by dating Alma than vice-a-versa and yet he more eagerly enters the relationship because of his passionate and almost "lost lamb" type disoriented nature; unlike Eugene, who has no concrete plans after high school, Alma is more focused on developing herself, a person she does not really find until after she aborts Eugene's child from her body (Orlandersmith 48). Even at the point when she loses her virginity to Eugene, she is still too insecure to open up all the way. Alma is nervous and self-conscious about her appearance (due to her dark skin and extra weight) and becoming vulnerable; she forbids herself from enjoying the moment until the very end when Eugene professes his true feelings for her. Once Alma has won that level of acceptance, she finally surrenders and says, "He loves me---he says I'm beautiful---he loves me. I love him. "I love you too Gene" (Orlandersmith 39). Had both characters possessed similar expectations and a better sense of self, the relationship may have succeeded.

Comparable to Eugene, August: Osage County's Karen also has a facile manner of thinking that poisons her relationship with her fiancé Steve and she, too, has only a faint sense of self. Like a combination of a gullible child and a 1950s housewife, Karen's vision of a happy marriage pivots around the idea of her "country club Chamber of Commerce guy" (Letts 60) taking her on a honeymoon to Belize. When describing Steve to her sister Barbara, she never once mentions what she specifically likes about Steve. Never once does she cite any similar interests or philosophies or personality quirks or anything at all why they make a great couple. Even the most convincing of her statements comes across as rather vague, when she says, "He's a good man and he's good to me and he's good for me..." (Letts 61). Karen is the woman Alma refused to become, panting like a sorry dog. She likes Steve because he likes her back, not necessarily because she knows and appreciates him for his character. When Steve attacks Jean, Karen insinuates that Jean was somehow at fault for Steve's behavior instead of admitting to herself that her fiancé is a full-grown man responsible for his own perverted actions. Admitting that Steve took advantage of Jean would destroy Karen's fantasy---and, at over 40 years of age, she realizes that she will likely not have another chance at 'happily ever after.' Her relationship with Steve is destined for failure because she, more so than any of the characters in these four plays, subscribes to the idea that relationships must parallel fairytales. Yet one of the reasons why most fairytales bore or annoy many adults and precocious children is that the characters live in a flat and ideal world. In fairytales, love is never ugly, never hard. There is only one category and level of love whereas in reality, love comes in many degrees of passion and compassion and so many forms: platonic love, romantic love, interracial love, intercultural love, homosexual love, heterosexual love, etc. In fact, love comes in many physical forms, too, with people of two completely different shapes and sizes falling in love.

Fat Pig's fit and slender Tom and morbidly obese Helen serve as another notable example of couples with differing expectations and senses of self. Helen enter their relationship to the surprise of Tom's colleagues but not to the surprise of the audience, after they witness the two of them flirt in the act titled "That First Meeting with Her" (LaBute 5). Both parties seem equally engaged as the couple exchanges witty banter, laughs, and even compliments. Tom looks forward to spending more time with this charming "print word specialist" and pockets the napkin upon which Helen wrote her phone number (LaBute 15), foreshadowing their ensuing liaisons and implying that he harbors hope for their future together. Tom parallels Eugene in that he is too optimistic. Helen, however, approaches the situation more realistically; she knows the danger involved but does not want it to discourage Tom, either. Before leaving the table for good at the end of their first rendez-vous, she says, "...I figure there's every reason why I'll never hear from you again...[but] Please do not let yourself be afraid of me or of taking some kind of blind chance, or what people think...because this could be so great" (LaBute 15). With each date, Tom and Helen recognize how well they suit each other; but as happy as the relationship makes Tom, like any knight striving to protect his lady's honor, he becomes defensive about it and wants to shield Helen from all of the insults his colleagues snicker at the office. He shrouds their relationship in a protective covering, at first even denying its existence to both his best friend and ex-girlfriend (LaBute 24).

In the end, Tom admits how much societal approval matters to him. He was not fully aware of this at the beginning of the play; had he been more honest with himself, he probably never would have started dating Helen. In his climatic monologue, he says, "All this love inside and it's not nearly enough to get around the shit that people heave at you...I don't wanna fight it anymore. I am just not strong enough for that...I'm not brave...I'm a weak and fearful person" (LaBute 83-84). Ideally, Tom would have sacrificed his desire for societal acceptance in order to be with Helen. His love for her should have triumphed over his fear of what others would think. Perhaps in another era, culture, or world altogether, their love would have succeeded. But in this day and age where it sometimes seems like every person prescribes to a fad diet and no magazine is without cadaverous looking models, Helen is too far removed from society's standards of beauty for Tom's peers not to wonder about their partnership. Even though Tom breaks up with Helen, it is she, not Tom, who retains her dignity at the end of the play. Through the course of the play, she has experienced love and being loved and acknowledges love's sacrifices. By offering to undergo gastric bypass surgery for Tom, Helen is willing to make the relationship work. In the end, Tom cannot cope with societal pressures and conclusively cannot love Helen unconditionally.

In contrast to Tom and Helen's relationship, Red Light Winter's Matt and Christina suffered no societal obstacles but rather emotional ones. Unlike Helen, Christina, with her "[killer body]," "dominant legs," "perfect tits," and heart-shaped ass" (Rapp 35) is conventionally gorgeous. But, as Matt and Christina, it is the mysterious inner beauty that more often determines the course of a relationship---and their total ignorance of each other's serves as just one of many reasons why their partnership was destined to fail. It never fulfilled the standard definition of any romantic relationship in the first place. Christina had a single and rather brief sexual encounter with her client Matt and never spoke to him until a year later, only for the purpose of finding his best friend. Their "relationship" revolves around a couple of minutes in time that Matt suspends in his memory; Matt specifically hinges it upon a single moment. "...I haven't been able to...stop thinking about you...I know that...sexually speaking...it was this totally uneventful blip of antimatter for you, but I'm pretty convinced that despite my inept...sexual brevity...that something real passed between us...it was more than the sex...it was bigger than anything I could ever fucking write about" (Rapp 83).

Another reason why their relationship never would have succeeded in that context is that Matt and Christina are completely insecure with their own selves. Matt needs a romantic relationship to rebuild his self-esteem after his ex-girlfriend Sarah leaves him for his best friend Davis. At the beginning of the play, he attempts suicide---possibly for his failed romantic relationship with Sarah and/or possibly because of his frustration and obscurity as a playwright--- and after returning home to New York, he lives the life of a hermit, with his abusive "frienemy" Davis as his only company. Because Matt is so insecure, his feelings for Christina are more obsessive than actually loving. He is anxious and far too speculative about the potential possibilities between them instead of adapting a carpe diem philosophy. As he admits himself, he spends a great deal of his time in his head (Rapp 83), contradicting Karen's statement that men are more active go-getters than women (Letts 60). Despite his sexual encounter with Christina, Matt knows nothing about her, not even her real name. Genuine love requires a person to truly know his partner or at least actively delve but Matt comfortably accepts his illusions about Christina because he is not brave enough to face reality. Meanwhile, Christina is equally insecure. She is a perpetual actress who constantly changes her name and identity, most likely because she is not comfortable with who she is, if she knows who she is (which is somewhat doubtful.) Instead of falling for the sweet and sensitive Matt, Christina falls for the cruel and corrosive Davis because she is not secure enough to demand a healthy relationship. Before Matt and Christina can love another, they must learn to love and respect themselves, otherwise they will never find their other halves.

The aforementioned romantic relationships all accurately reflect the relationships that exist between men and women in real life today because of the realistic conflicts that characterize them. Differing values, hopes, and interests prevent the relationships from enduring. What none except truly grasp is that love requires selfless caring, concern, and sacrifice, as much as humanly possible. It is, at least metaphorically speaking, the merging of two souls. Anything less---as evidenced by the aforementioned male/female relationships, with the exception of Tom and Helen's partnership---is merely infatuation or lust. Ultimately, Tom and Helen's relationship appears the most the romantic and the most poignant. Society sunders their hopes of being together. Genuine affection and understanding exist between them but those in combination will not save them. Tom and Helen enter the relationship unexpectedly due to their differing proportions and certainly harbor naïve and unrealistic hopes until the very end. But at least they can honestly proclaim that they found their other half.

Works Cited

LaBute, Neil. Fat Pig. New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2004.

Letts, Tracy. August: Osage County. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2008.

Orlandersmith, Dael. Yellowman. New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc, 2002.

Plato. The Symposium. M.I.T. Classics Library (http://classics.mit.edu). http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html.

Rapp, Adam. Red Light Winter. New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2006