“Strangers in Marriage Say No”

While I was a child, I asked my father, “Daddy, how was I brought to this life?” He looked at me and smiled and said, “Son, I will tell you later when you become older.” Many years later he answered me this question that I posted when I was a kid. After he answered my question, he told me about marriage. He told me to marry the woman that you love no matter if she is Asian, black or white. On the other hand, the story of “Say Yes” shows an argument about the issues on race specially marriage between different colors and culture. I believe any couple should not marry until they love each other no matter what the circumstances and no matter what the culture. Also they should spend a period of time with other before they decide to get married for the reason that there many differences between two people even if they share the same color of the skin. It is important to know the partner in a way as to be sure to have a lasting relationship.

In the first place, couples should spend a little time like a month or two months or even more with each other before marriage. In this period of time they can figure what the other looks like. Also they can know if she or he can live the rest of his or her life with the other person. In the story of “Say Yes,” the husband posts that “How can you understand someone who come from a completely different background?”(609). The answer for his question is that they should spend a period of time with each other in order to figure out what is the person’s personality and could the couple live happy or not.

My father told me a story about his friend, his name is Rami. Rami met with a girl, from Japan about 10 years ago. They spent about 3 months hanging out and talking in the phone. After that they fell in love with each other and they live happy right now. Actually, they got all the benefits of spending time to know each other, and finally they are happy. Without the benefit of knowing each other before deciding to get married they might realize only a little too late after they get married that even when the lights are closed or turned on, they are seem strangers to each other (611). In the story, for instance, when the lights were turned off, the sounds that the husband hears become strange sounds as if he lived with someone he did not fully know.

On the other hand, people who live in the desert have a special belief which is the women cannot be seen until she got marriage. Statistics show that this kind of marriages cannot last for so long because how can one know another if the partner is veiled in secrecy physically at least. So the couple should have a period of time that they can spend with each other. That time spent knowing the partner must also be one that is quality time. In other words, not only must they spend time with each other just like that but they must spend the time to know each other.

In the story of “Say Yes” the wife posts many times that the husband “would not have married her if she were black?” (609). This goes to show that she believes in meeting and spending time before falling in love and marriage because in her situation the husband was not prepared to accept her for who she is no matter the race. However, spending a period of time should have standards not allowing the sexual things. In order to prevent divorce in the future, the couples should not have any sexual relations things when they spend time with other before they get married.

 As popularly felt by most people, men are too weak when faced with the temptation of the sexual things. If the couples for example “had sex” during the period of time that they supposed to spend to know with each other, the relationship will be affected. It is most likely that the relationship will still continue to last but not very long because people get old. But there is no possibility for continuing this marriage because of love. Moreover, the marriage that does not contain love is very weak and easily to be damaged. An evidence from the story shows that when the wife closes the light in order to show two important things the love is still there until the end of life however the sexual things gone when “she closes the light” which means when the person become old the sexual things will disappear (611). In addition, when the person becomes old, he will become weak specially with the sexual things. From a religious aspect, in the Holy Quran, which is a book that has been sent by Allah, Allah said the marriage is the building of life and in order to build a good life you should a great soul mate. It is mentioned in the Holy Quran that because the next generation depends on the parents.

If the parents were a good match and they love and understand each other they can make a good environment for their children. For example, I grew up in this great condition, and as a result, I can give rise to a generation of good people to follow. The story of “Say Yes” presents an argument between the husband and the wife. The husband believes that marriage should be between two couples who have the same background because he supports the idea of making a great generation if the match was perfect. Even though they have a different opinion, and also they get angry sometimes, because of love the relationship between them still remains the same or maybe stronger, we can figure out when she got cut he was worried about her (609). In other words, the couple may have differences in opinions and philosophies in the end when there is true love the differences are set aside to attend to more important things which is to clean up the wound with all tender and loving care.

Love also means sharing everything. In order to share everything with the other soul mate you should understand him or her. I love the way that the story of “say Yes” presents how the couple sharing everything. The story starts “They were doing the dishes, his wife washing while he dried. He had washed the night before” (608). That shows how the couple should help and share everything even the dishes. Also, prophet Mohammed, the prophet that send by Allah and always say the truth, advised us to share everything whether it is hard or easy in order to have a complete love.

There are many type of real love. One type is loving between friends and the other is loving because something such as a sexual thing, as I mentioned before. The period of time that the couples spend with each other shows what type of love the couple have., so they should be aware of that. The story of “Say Yes” shows what type of love the couple have. When the argument was very strong between them, the wife, by mistake, cut herself and the husband ignores everything because he was worried about her. That shows a real love between the couple. However, during the period that a husband and a wife spend time with each other before getting marriage, they should be aware of two things. First, the sexual love, as I mentioned before is one that is shallow only concerned with the physical aspects of the partner. When they grow old, the physical features which were made the basis for their love disappears, what then? Everyone should be aware of this kind of fake and superficial love.

“A Little Too Much Love Can Be Bad Sometimes”

Love and marriage are topics that are familiar to everyone. These are words that are easy to discuss but difficult to think about. As such, in writing my paper I had an easy time giving out what I think about love and at the same time create a paper that had a personal analysis of the story of Tobias Wolff entitled “Say Yes”.  I was able to draw from personal experiences about my ideas on love and how that was shown by my parents and my family. However, when I started talking about love I forgot to make proper references to the story. It was tempting to discuss love and marriage in a general way but giving in to this temptation made the direction of paper go to different places. Instead of putting the story at the centrepiece I realized that the paper has become a personal essay. What I did therefore was to minimize the personal stories and focus on referencing the story. In that way, I can still make my point known based on what I have experienced in my life while making the story stand out.

The first paragraph as far as I know and I think that it was a good introduction because it does not go straight to the discussion of the story but gives a proper background for what I am about to discuss in the paper. In the paragraph I was able to identify the two things I wanted to discuss such love and marriage in the context of my life and my beliefs and the story. However, there was comment that made me think. That comment is about not clearly showing what I intended to the paper without the proper forecast or “Will you use your own experience?” and “give us a little forecast of how I will show the readers that”. I thought I would expand the paragraph so that the difficult ideas I had would be clear. I added, “I believe any couple should not marry until they love each other no matter what the circumstances and no matter what the culture. Also they should spend a period of time with other before they decide to get married for the reason that there many differences between two people even if they share the same color of the skin. It is important to know the partner in a way as to be sure to have a lasting relationship.” These three sentences are important because it makes the direction of my paper in one way. First, that with the proper amount of time spent together, even race and culture will not be an issue just like these were issues in the story “Say Yes”. Also I wanted to show that if the couples are aware of each others’ weaknesses and tendencies then it would be easy for them to argue about issues

 The second paragraph I begin to discuss the importance of time spent knowing each other for couples before going into marriage. In my mind this is an important subtopic to discuss because as can be seen by evidence in the story, the husband and the wife in “Say Yes” still have some important things to sort out. It might appear to be a superficial argument about the possibility of two races to marry during that time but the implications of that argument is deep. In my experience, good couples are happy and not sad. The wife was sad because she had an idea in her mind which she wanted to discuss with the husband but the husband wanted to avoid the issue. Therefore, it was important to insert the topic about spending time with each other. However, my original second paragraph was too long and I broke the paragraph into two.

The third paragraph was the point where I drew from my personal experiences again. I told the story about Rami which my father told me. The story was good because it supported my claim in some degree because I wanted to say that time is very important. But again at this point I forget the story altogether that is why I inserted a portion of the story into my discussion to make the paragraph more effective: “In the story, for instance, when the lights were turned off, the sounds that the husband hears become strange sounds as if he lived with someone he did not fully know”. This addition was to make a connection to the “Say Yes” story. I also included in the third paragraph that “Statistics show that this kind of marriages cannot last for so long because how can one know another if the partner is veiled in secrecy physically at least” to support my claim that people who live in the Middle East were finding love to be a difficult thing because sometimes they don’t see who they marry. This makes love difficult because once the veil is removed perhaps they would have a change of mind. Love like that cannot continue.

There was comment that I raised an interesting point about the implications of the question “would you marry me if I were black” which is tied with the amount of time that is necessary to make a perfect or a good marriage. At this point, I separated and created a new paragraph. I tried to explain more about my ideas by saying that the question posted by the wife would go “to show that she believes in meeting and spending time before falling in love and marriage because in her situation the husband was not prepared to accept her for who she is no matter the race”. The point here is that time is important once again for love to develop and mature into a decision of marriage.

My following paragraph was a little too confusing even for myself. I said “As known the human being is took weak in front of the sexual things. If the couples, for example, “had sex” during the period of time that they supposed to spend with each other, the relationship will be affected”. The quotation is the original form without corrections. I read the sentence again and was confused too about what I tried to say. But after second reading I remember what I wanted to say and so I tried to write my thoughts down in a clear way: “As popularly felt by most people, men are too weak when faced with the temptation of the sexual things. If the couples for example “had sex” during the period of time that they supposed to spend to know with each other, the relationship will be affected. It is most likely that the relationship will still continue to last but not very long because people get old. But there is no possibility for continuing this marriage because of love”. The second sentence is an improvement because it is clearer and better way to say my meaning that 1) men are naturally sexual creatures but that 2) allowing this urge to control emotions in deciding who and when to marry can most of the time lead to a failed marriage. This is connected to the story because it is not clear if the two people in the story are married or if they are there are questions how it will last with their differences.

I noticed in my following paragraphs that I mentioned the quotations from the Holy Quran. I believe not to cut out these important teachings because these quotations are something I believe is universal and can be applied in the story. I mentioned certain teachings because I believe that if these teachings were followed or at least in a way known by the characters in the story then perhaps the ending would have been that “the lights were closed but I can still see the shadow as something I know very well and not as a stranger”. But that’s just me thinking out loud.

In my final paragraphs I continued to discuss love, the many types of love and the warning that fake love can sometimes be wrong. At this point I realized that I have mentioned the word love too much even though the story could probably be about something else important. Yes, even writing a paper can be a difficult task if it has too much “love” written in it. While it is generally a good thing, I learned that too much of a good thing is sometimes bad just as proven by my paper which contained too many “love” topics. I tried to change this by making my paper more relevant to the story and by adding references to the “Say Yes” events and the discussion they had with the talk about blacks marrying whites and how the husband must accept the wife no matter what.