Student Essay on Ashurt's Two Loves

Ashurt's Two Loves

Summary:   Reading the Apple Tree by John Galsworthy, the readers once again have a chance to comprehend and to perceive different senses in the loves, which Ashurt devoted to Megan Davis and to Stella Halliday.

TWO LOVES OF ASHURT

Love is no strange to human and human are born to love and to be loved. Our love poet Xuan Dieu used to say, "How can we survive without falling in love with another?" Therefore, no matter when and where we live, love is still beautiful with its myriads of senses ranging from sadness to happiness. Reading the Apple Tree by John Galsworthy, the readers once again have a chance to comprehend and to perceive different senses in the loves, which Ashurt devoted to Megan Davis and to Stella Halliday.

Megan Davis was a country girl who Ashurt met when he and his friend was making way to Charfolk. Right at their first meeting, our Ashurt was attracted by the natural beauty of this girl. "And Ashurt, who saw beauty without wondering how it could take advantage, thought "How pretty!." Slowly, Ashurt could not remove Megan's face out of his head and her face stuck firmly in his memory. Looking at her face gave him pleasure like when he looked at a wild flower or at some pretty sight in the Nature.

Ashurt's love for Megan was presented in several details. One of those details can be his talking with his friend- Carton. When Carton told him that Megan was "a very subtle study psychologically", he seemed to go up the wall, and at that very moment Carton was no more than an ass in his eyes. It is common knowledge that whenever one is in love, his lover must be the most beautiful and perfect in the world. No mistake can be found in that person and even if she has some shortcomings, those shortcomings can become sweet ones. Ashurt here was no exception, to him, Megan was a work of nature. "She was a wild flower. A creature it did you good to look at." Even her simple reply, "yes" can become so "crisp and graceful, so conclusive, and politely acquiescent." It is clear that loving eyes are blind, and this is certainly true to Ashurt. He did realize that Megan's shoes were split and her hands rough, but these things were of no importance, even the fact that she had Celtic blood, to him she was still a lady born, a jewel though probably she could no more than just read and write. Although he knew that Megan was

so simple, so defenseless, and not of his world, he did not care about that, he only knew that all he had to do at that very moment was to become her protector.

Ashurt's love for Megan was much different from all his loves in the past. Never before had he had such a new sensation and a sense of completed manhood like this time. Ashurt was madly in love with Megan.

Stella appeared when Ashurt's love for Megan was still passionate. She was a pretty and sensitive girl who stole the heart of this idealistic man. John Galsworthy did not describe her beauty as much as he did with Megan's beauty, which does not mean that he had little affection for this character. It seemed to me that he was using the same technique, which our Nguyen Du used to do some centuries ago, using the beauty of Megan as a ground to rocket the beauty of Stella.

Since meeting Stella, Ashurt, who was planning a scheme of running away with Megan, always feared that the Hallidays and Stella particularly discovered his plan. "If they knew what was in his mind- if they knew that this very night he had meant! Well, there would be a little sound of disgust, and he would be alone in the cave." Why did John Galsworthy let her hero live in fear like that? Maybe he wanted to tell us that Ashurt's love for Megan was not strong and mature enough.

Stella was not a girl of simplicity like Megan. Her intelligence and charm never made Ashurt feel bored and Ashurt himself found their time together like a pleasurable dream in which time and incidence hung up and importance and reality suspended. When her fingers touched his, he felt soothed and happy, and when he went to bed, he willfully kept his thoughts on her, wrapping himself in her fair, cool sisterly radiance, as in some garment of protection.

Since his meeting with Stella, he hated himself, and almost hated the Hallidays including Stella with her fair, shy beauty because they made him know for certain that he would never get married with Megan. Whenever he thought of his poor little Megan, Stella always appeared beautifully and charmingly interrupting those thoughts. None could say for sure that his love for Stella was as beautiful as his love for Megan, but it is easily drawn that this love is laid upon a concrete foundation which is time and mature thinking.

Megan and Stella were two extremes of characters; they are totally different from each other. Ashurt's loves for them are accordingly different. If his love for Megan was something tender, pure and ebullient, his love for Stella was passionate, remorseful and mature. It cannot be said which love was better, but all of the readers know that Ashurt was so lucky a man that he had a chance to enjoy the loves of both women- Stella and Megan.

Both of these women were pretty and purely young. They were both at the age of seventeen, an age in which human like Romeo and Juliet can sacrifice their life for the so-called love. The loves of both Megan and Stella for Ashurt were pure and truthful. However, it was unfortunate for Ashurt that they did not come together at one time, so that he could make a good choice. Although they did not come together at one time, the gap between their sudden entrances into Ashurt's life was so small, making Ashurt fall deeply in love.

If Megan was his first pot of luck, and Ashurt loved her with a wild and passionate love, Stella was another pot of luck to him. And this time, although Ashurt loved Stella, he was still haunted by the image of his poor little Megan. Sometimes the God was too generous to grant human with many choices, which put human into a dilemma. That was the situation of Ashurt.

During his stay with the Hallidays, Ashurt had to sense a feeling of remorse. "The intimacy of these last two days, the strength of this Halliday atmosphere seemed to ring him round, and make the farm and Megan- even Megan seem unreal." And at this very moment, Stella's image appeared in his mind, interrupting his thought on Megan. He did not know what to do next but he knew that if he did not return to Megan, it would be awful, but to come back to her was much more awful.

There was once or twice when I blamed the God for being so generous. He gave me so many choices and made me choose only one. Had Ashurt ever blamed the God like me? I am not sure about this, but I know that Ashurt must have thanked the god for bringing Stella to his life.

Without Stella, Ashurt would have never realized that his love for Megan was only an ebullient one. Time passing by, he would get tired just because she gave him everything, so simple and so trustful.

Without Stella, Ashurt would have never thought about the fact that if he transplanted Megan to his flat in London, a person belonging wholly to Nature like Megan, lacking all of intellectual qualities would soon become his secret plaything- nothing else.

Without Stella, Megan would have been the miracle to Ashurt, the most wonderful thing in Ashurt's blindly loving eyes. With all the things above, would it be possible for Megan and Ashurt to live happily together? Nobody can answer this question, and could neither Megan nor Ashurt.

The God granted Megan to Ashurt so that he could sense a purely wild love, and he granted Stella to Ashurt so that he could have a life-long love.

"Love can bring both joy and pain to human", may that be the message which John Galsworthy wanted to send us- the readers. By using the technique of narrative skillfully, John Galsworthy explored thoroughly the psychology of the characters. Under his pen, appeared lines writing about the wildly passionate love Ashurt had towards Megan, the new sensation internalizing this man when he met Stella and the inner conflict that Ashurt had to experience. When I read this story, I found my own image sometimes like Ashurt, sometimes like Megan, and sometimes like Stella. That is the talent of this Nobel winner!