Self-Identity as a Form of Love

As you may have gathered from the schedule overview, this week's stories and poems all explore the common theme of love, though in quite different ways. Amy Tan's "A Pair of Tickets" is a story of parental and familial love, loss, and discovery as a woman and her father are reunited with family in China, while Louise Erdrich's "Love Medicine" examines both familial love, through Lipsha's love for his grandparents, and romantic love, as he attempts to work magic to renew his grandparents' love for each other.
Meanwhile, the poems we've read all demonstrate very different attitudes toward love. Marlowe's shepherd tempts his love with "beds of Roses" (line 9) and earthly goods, while Raleigh's poem, written in answer, points out the fleeting nature of youth and such tangible gifts. Shakespeare's sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day") addresses a young man; whether that love is platonic or romantic is somewhat ambiguous, though the speaker describes the young man as blessed with "eternal summer" (line 9). In Shakespeare's sonnet 130 ("My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun"), meanwhile, the speaker describes his mistress as lacking traditional beauty, yet declares his "love as rare / As any she belied with false compare" (lines 13-14). And finally, in a bit of a departure from these four poems, we have Dorothy Parker's "One Perfect Rose," in which she questions that well-known symbol of love.
In this week's discussion, focus on two of these works and discuss how they approach the idea of love. You might choose to examine the ideas of familial love, loss, and healing in Tan or Erdrich's stories. How does love drive a particular character or characters (Jing-mei or Lipsha, for instance)?
If you choose to discuss two of the poems, you might compare and contrast the ways the poets speak of love in them. Some questions that may help get you started: What does the way they speak of their love (or lovers) suggest to you? What do you make of the connection between love and beauty as illustrated in your chosen poems, or love and time? What of the lovers' gifts? Marlowe's shepherd proposes showering his love with many gifts, while Parker's hypothetical lover offers a single red rose.
Include at least one example (a direct quotation) from each story or poem. This week, since we've seen how to compose a Works Cited page, include a list of Works Cited at the end of your main post (you do not need to include one in your responses to others). Don't worry about indentation or double-spacing; just practice getting the information down and in the right order.
**Edited to add: The PDF of the Erdrich story is from our Norton textbook, so your works cited for it will look like the example in the MLA lesson in this module--see the works cited example for Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour."
The PDF of the Amy Tan story is not from our book, so use the following format for the works cited:
Tan, Amy. "A Pair of Tickets." 1989. PDF file.
(I have included the two works that I have chosen to use)