All About Love Literary Elements

Nonfiction

It is set in a modern-day society in the context of love.

First-person narration from the author’s point of view.

Contemplative, Critical

The protagonist is bell hooks and the antagonist is the modern-day abandonment of love.

The author stresses that the meaning of love has both been misrepresented in the past but also lost its meaning in modern society. The traditional notions of love relied on patriarchal thinking and gender stereotypes. Whereas in the modern climate people hardly believe in love and its significance.

There is no apparent climax.

The author speaking about the grief and heartbreak from her breakup with her partner foreshadows the cynical perception of love.

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“Nowadays the most popular messages are those that declare the meaningless of love, its irrelevance. A glaring example of this cultural shift was the tremendous popularity of Tina Turner’s song with the title boldly declaring, “What’s Love Got to Do with It.”

“One day on my way to work, looking forward to the day’s meditation on love that the sight of the graffiti art engendered, I was stunned to find that the construction company had painted over the picture with a white paint so glaringly bright it was possible to see faint traces of the original art underneath.”

“Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.”

bell hooks compares the perceptions of love that both men and women harbor but in different ways.

“Men writing about love always testify that they have received love. They speak from this position; it gives what they say authority. Women, more often than not, speak from a position of lack, of not having received the love we long for.”

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“But television can portray caring, loving family interaction.”