Journal entry# 10 Ambrose Bierce

Siu Faat Jimmy Wong
English 48b
January 17, 2008
Professor Lankford

Quote:

Love ---A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions.

Summary:

This quote is found in the Devil’s Dictionary of Ambrose Bierce.

Response:

Bierce puts a lot of interesting explanations about the words in this dictionary. Among so many interesting words, I finally chose a very familiar word, “Love” and I really like this quote because it really explains the reality about love. He uses a very good metaphor to explain the nature of love. From my viewpoint, the author compares the “love” with “disease” which is a negative word. My interpretation is that the author views the love in a negative way such as couples may be suspicious of each others. However, in order to cure this kind of suspicions, one way is to get married in which couples give promise of commitment for each other (though this may not be true in the society nowadays). The other way to get rid of this kind of clueless suspicious or other kind of crazy acts when falling in love is to break up, in other words, staying alone.

In the second sentence, the author defines “love” as something that only happens within people who are civilized. In the old days, people seldom have the concept of “love”. People’s marriages are mostly appointed by their parents in which they have no way to choose their own spouses. Yet, as people get civilized, they need to have more rights and freedom. Therefore, the security to have a stable partner becomes lower. People will easily do a lot of crazy things for their boyfriends or girlfriends. No matter they are homosexual or heterosexual, they are all the same.

All in all, I think that Bierce really did a very good job to explain the “love” to his readers. “Love” really makes difference between today and the old days.