What Is Love?

Hazlitt, the writer, communicates in his essay by establishing his idea that love is unchanging. The purpose of Hazlitt is to persuade people to love each other because love is forever. He adopts an optimistic tone in order to emphasize his opinion on loving people and God. He utilizes the rhetorical strategies and strong positive words to communicate the idea that unlimited and complete love.  

To begin with, the usage of rhetorical strategies especially pathos and logos are to praise the positive side of love. He appeals the strong emotion to the audience, in this case, it was used to convince the readers to understand the true meaning of love that the author is having. For instance, “and sue to be her slave, and tend her steps without notice and without reward; and serve her living, and mourn for her when dead” (Hazlitt, 14~16) touches the reader’s feeling which is the usage of pathos. Furthermore, he aims the logical thinking of the audiences when they read, in the text to stabilize the idea of love. He uses questions to lead the readers to answer the way he wants, such as “Did I not live on her smile? Is it less sweet because it is withdrawn from me? Did I not adore her every grace? Does she bend less enchantingly, because she has turned from me to another? Is my love then in the power of fortune, or of her caprice?” (6~8). The questions he made in the essay are very obvious to answer, which is intentional because he wants to lead the readers to answer the way he wants. Even though he gives the answer after he gives the questions, the use of logic to answer the question is logos. Hence, the author communicates his opinion by appealing his logic and emotion.

  On top of that, the author praises the love as unalterable and perfect. The early childhood experiences of the moving country to country and the fact that his father is protestant affected how he thinks about love and God. As he mentioned in the essay, love is the hero which makes us live through suffering “and when that fails, the memory of it shall survive” (12~13). This means that even people go through failures, the memory of love and being loved would save them from death. In addition, the usage of the word “survive” (12) in the text makes the tone more optimistic because it gives a feeling of safe and secure. Furthermore, other word choices that he made in the essay such as love, sweet, heroic, and worship are also supporting his idea about the impression of true love. Therefore, the tone he tried to make, optimistic and happy tone helped the readers to understand the general subject and attitude of the author toward the topic, true love.  

   The author reveals her thoughts about the consistency and completeness of love, with the use of rhetorical strategies and choice of words, tone. The meaning of love is widely controversial these days because of the corruption of real meaning. This essay clearly shows how was love should be treated and what does the love do to human life.

“A William Haziltt Essay”, Essays: Picked by Blupete. http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/LiberAmoris.htm.2011. March 20, 2019