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Everybody wants to believe in true love

Eric Segal manages to create the feeling that "Love Story" has really happened

The book "Love Story" written by Eric Segal was a big hit in the seventies. Although this book is written in colloquial English, it was read by many people. The question is: Why did Eric Segal have such a great success with his novelette?

In my opinion every person in this world believes or wants to believe in true love. So all the people like it when they hear something about two persons who love each other. And they want to see the process that happens between the two lovers. From girlfriend and boyfriend to wife and husband. I think that every human has a plan to find the right woman or the right man and to live together with this person that she or he loves. And when you read a story in which exactly this happens then you feel good and it helps you to believe in real love.

After two thirds of the story there is the turning-point where the happy married couple recognizes that one of them will die soon. When you read the last part of the story, you feel very helpless and sad. I do not think that this turning of the story was positive for the success of the book, because nobody I know including me voluntarily enjoys feeling sad and helpless. But maybe some readers were happy to read this part of the book, too, just because they saw that there were people in the world that had more problems than they had themselves.

The whole book is written from Oliver´s point of view. Consequently the book is written from the point of view of the man of this marriage. In my opinion this is the clue why this novelette was such a big hit. Every man wants to listen to a love story that is written by a man and every woman finds it interesting to see what a man thinks about a relationship with the woman he loves.

But not only the fact that this book is written from a man´s point of view is the clue to the great success of it. I think that the style of how the book is written is a component, too, why Eric Segal had this big hit with this book. Nobody could say that the book loses suspense in the course of the story. By using direct speech Eric Segal very often manages to create the feeling in the reader that this whole story has really happened.

Are all people members of one body?

The play "An Inspector Calls" written by J. B. Priestley in 1946 deals with the political and social situation in England at the beginning of the last century. It shows the big gap between the poor and the rich people of that time. There are two basic opinions in that play: On the one hand there is Mr Birling, who is a very rich factory-owner. He thinks that every man in a society has to care for himself and that something like a community is complete nonsense. On the other hand there is Inspector Goole, who visits the Birling family because a poor ex-factory girl has committed suicide and because he thinks that this family is responsible for the death of that girl. His opinion is that everybody is collectively responsible for each other and that everybody is connected to all other individuals in a society. So the two leading actors of the play are extremely different in their basic political notion. Mr Birling is a synonym for a capitalist and the Inspector personifies a typical socialist.

The question is which philosophy, which political notion is better for a human society? The historical happenings have shown us that the capitalistic way is better for a society than socialist politics. Everyone who saw the two different political systems in Germany between 1961 and 1989 will support this view. The idea of socialism is basically good, because it includes things like the equality of everyone and that every person in a society should have labour. But the idea was wrecked because of the wrong transposition by the statesmen. Nowadays nearly every country in the world is lead by capitalistic politics. This fact shows that this economic system is generally accepted in the world.

But one big problem remains for countries that are lead by capitalistic politicians. There are some rich people who have a lot of money and there are a lot of poor people who have little money. The rich, who have nearly all the money, have got the power in this state too. That is not really fair, because only the people that have got money, are able to change something in a state with capitalistic politics. And it is very difficult for the other, bigger part in this nation to put through their interests.

So in my opinion it is good to have capitalistic politics in a state, but the politicians would have to show the people that they live in one society, in one community. They should tell them that they have to help each other when someone needs help. Everyone should think that all people in one society are members of one body. If capitalistic politics were welded together with those basic socialist ideas then a political system would be fair for everyone who lives in it. This has partially happened in Germany: Very many people gave much money to the victims of the flood disaster in 2002. I think that this is a good sign and it shows that humans do care about the fate of their fellow men like they should do.