Monday, May 12, 2008
Love, loyalty, and betrayal
The novel, Shark Dialogues, asks the question: "When is love too much? When is it not enough?" (149) Is it possible to love someone too much? Do you think Pono was a good mother to her children? Was Duke a good father? What experiences from your life help you relate to these questions? to these characters and their issues of loyalty and betrayal?
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Can there be too much of a good thing for a human being? Love is always a key element in any relationship. Too much love can lead to obsession and too little love can lead to neglect. In the relationship between Pono, Duke and their children, love plays a critical role in creating the tension that seperates Puno from her daughters, just as it drives Pono to Duke over the years.
As Pono gives life to four daughters, she takes on the responsibility of sole provider and parent to them, not out of love for her children but out of love for Duke. Because of that, Pono was not a good mother to his children. She performs the role of a matriarch by providing for them, grooming them and putting them through school, yet she is too busy to give them love of a mother. Growing up in a lower middle class family, my parents would often work 16 hours a day to provide for their five children. But at the same time, they were there to answer our silly questions and we would take a weekend off of each month to go on a family trip. Pono does not place such emphasis on being there for her daughters. Yet, she manages to find time to visit Duke.
Duke is a better father than Pono is mother to their children. Even though he loves Pono, for the sake of their children he wants her to marry another man who will provide them with an education and good upbringing. He inquires about his daughters and ponders over their pictures.
Pono's loyalty lies with Duke, not with her daughters. In a sense, Pono's daughters are betrayed by their mother, who puts her love for Duke above their need for maternal love and comfort. She neglects her daughters, which implants the seed that leads to their betrayal of her as adults.
When considering these two extremes of love, amazingly, Pono is capable of having both too much love and not enough love for her self. She is so torn with her love and obsession for Duke that she mistreats herself and her children. The way that her obsession plays out on her life when Duke is not around reflects both extremes in her ability to love. How she ultimately treats herself is proof that it is destructive to one’s self worth if one does not give oneself a healthy amount of love and respect.
Pono has such a deep love for Duke that she allows herself the ultimate selfishness. She neglects her children in order to have what she feels she needs most: Duke. If she cared about herself more moderately, instead of exclusively, she would be able to fulfill her family’s needs. Duke desperately wants her to care for his children by loving them wholly and marrying another so that his children might lead a more normal life. Her children and grandchildren seek her approval and love beyond all else. Seeing only what she wants she is unable to give to any of these people what they desire. Although her love is directly for Duke, it plays out as a selfish love for her own life and a denial of everyone else’s.
However, Pono’s extreme obsession for Duke also plays out in self-loathing and not enough respect and love for her own life. When he is first sent to the leper camp she neglects her own life so much that she allows a man to rape her repeatedly while living in a horrible work camp. This is only a small part of the big picture, though. She loves herself too much and too little to let her own children into her world. She never tells them who they really are, and her family comes to resent this for generations. She robs herself of a true family because she is always preparing for an eventual family when Duke finally returns. By the time she realizes that he will never come home to her, it is too late, and she has lost most of her family.
Pono should have loved others enough to know that she was not giving them the love they needed, and reserving it only for Duke and her selfish needs. She should also have loved herself enough to do what was good for her, thereby giving her entire family what they most wanted: her love.
My first reaction to the question “Is it possible to love someone too much?” was of course “no!”. However, after examining Pono’s relationships (or lack thereof) I have changed my mind. In Pono’s case, she may love Duke too much. Pono loves Duke so much, that she becomes so preoccupied about wanting to be with him and wanting him to be cured of leprosy that she neglects her family and herself. I do not feel that Pono was a good mother to her children. Although she did provide for them, she did not actually love them. As each child grows up they feel that they have been neglected and that there was something wrong with them that made their mother not love them. Unfortunately, Pono’s children have grown up to raise children who feel much like themselves -- unwanted and defective.
Although I do not know the ins and outs of leprosy, it is clear that Duke did not see his children because he did not want them to catch the disease, or see him being disfigured. He did still seem to care about the children though, through inquiring them and feeling hurt for not being able to see them. He wanted them to have a father, the father that he couldn’t be for them because of his disease. Because of this, I feel that Duke would have been a good father had he not been infected with leprosy. However, I do not feel that it is beneficial for the children to believe that their father was in the war, and then killed. It would be less damaging for the children to know that their father was suffering and cared about them, rather than being told that he is dead. There are several ways that they could have communicated without actually seeing each other; Pono could have verbally corresponded back and forth, they could have written letters to one another, etc.
I work at a school and see situations like Pono has with her daughters every day. The children are dropped off for daycare at 6:00 AM, and picked up at 6:00 PM. It is clear that the parents have demanding jobs, but they also have children’s whose demands they are not meeting. These children often end up acting out to get the attention that they do not get at home. Unfortunately, I hear/see these people on a daily basis talking about the next child that they are going to have. It is a never ending cycle that I do not understand; It almost seems like they are having children out of vanity. Although Pono’s distraction of Duke is more heartfelt than these parent’s distraction with their jobs , it still leaves the children with the same negative feelings of neglect and defectiveness.
The first example that comes to mind when discussing the concept of 'too much love' is Romeo and Juliet. These two were so in love that they became a detriment to both themselves and society. They killed themselves and others died because of their love. Their love made them blind to reason and while this is a common occurrence, theirs took an extreme turn for the worse. This is ironic because love is a force of nurture and creation not perversion and destruction.
Pono gave the appearance of being a good mother: She provided for them materially. But she was absent from her children's lives emotionally. She was cared for her children because of Duke, so she was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Duke was a good father and certainly a better parent than Pono. His love for his children was so strong that he would give up the chance of marriage to Pono so another man could better provide for them. His desire for his children to live a better life than his own requires a selfless sacrifice.
From my own experiences, I have an uncle that married young. He and his wife both loved each other very much at first. As time went on, she started to love him more which turned into an obsession. This was offputting for my uncle, which led her to become very possessive of him. Eventually he divorced her, but she is still obsessed with him.
The imbalance of love in this case led to insecurity and then hatred. He still has do deal with ugly lawsuits stemming from the divorce.
When love becomes an obsession it is too much. Pono turned her love for a man into an obsession that disallowed her from loving any other person, including her own blood. She so urgently wanted to carry the seed of Duke so that he could live on, but neglected to care for that seed the same way she cared for and loved Duke. She loved Duke so much she forgot to love his seeds.
Two things, of course, occur at this point: loyalty and betrayal, the topic for this class.
In being loyal to Duke she betrayed her children. Each of her children chose a particular path to lead based on their feelings toward Pono’s neglect. Although she may have made them stronger women, made them survivors, I don’t believe that making them stronger compensates for a lack of relationship with the children in order to maintain a relationship with the father. She loved Duke so much, too much, that she forgot to give that love back to her children.
Now in the book, Run Run tells the girls and the granddaughters that she did love them. But, again, neglecting the outward appearance of love, the holding, coddling, and being proud of, only makes the girls cold and bitter. The girls in turn push their daughters away back to Pono.
I think that her love for Duke forced her to neglect and not have enough love for the others. This is unacceptable, no matter what kind of people Pono is trying to raise them to be. Although the fear and respect her, love would get her farther both with them and with what she was trying to accomplish. With each of the girls, they have to pay for the sins of others—the daughters for their father’s and the granddaughters for their mothers’ sins.
In addition to love being too much of a good thing, I don’t think that fear and respect is ever a good enough trade for true familial love. All that fear and respect offer is a safe haven and an absolute truth, but never comfort.
It is definitely possible to love someone too much! It becomes too much when your love becomes an obsession. This is the type of love that Pono has for Duke. She is so obsessed with Duke and his well being that her feelings for him overshadow the love that she has for her children.
Pono's loyalty to Duke causes her to betray her children. She is more concerned with protecting his pride and his wishes than she is with allowing the girls to know of the existence of their father. In her loyalty to him Pono has willingly allowed her girls to experience a void in their lives.
Duke is not an example of a good father since he is willing to go along with Pono in concealing his existence.
Duke and Pono could have let the girls know that they do have a father who is concerned about them. Instead they have both chosen to let the girls suffer mentally and emotionally which is not compensated for with the material needs that have been met for their daughters.
Having had parents who showed that they loved me during my upbringing, I can sympathize with Pono's girls. I think that it takes more than financial support to raise healthy children. Pono had been loyal to the girls when it came to meeting their physical needs but she and Duke have totally neglected their emotional needs. Good parenting supports the whole child and not just her physical well being.
Pono and Duke are making decisions that make them both loyal and betraying parents. Overall, it has become obvious that their betrayal has outweighed their loyalty which is why they are facing the repercussions of partial parenting.
It is definitely possible to love someone too much. A very good friend of mine fell in love with someone and put all her energy and time into hoping that he could love her as much as she did him. She put everyone else in her life- family and good friends-on the sideline. Her family was hurt by this, and friends were put off by her all-consuming feelings for this man. Luckily, she came to realize that these family members and friends were very important to her. Having just one person in her life put her off balance for awhile. She eventually realized that her obsession had made her quite selfish, and that she felt a fuller person when she had her friends and family to share her life with.
I admire Pono's strength and ability to survive, but she is not a good moter. Her selfish love for Duke left her unable to love her daughters, which confuses me a bit. If she really does love Duke, and wanted to have his children, which she did, how could she not love his children? Her treatment of the girls would be considered child abuse today, and I find her actions toward them reprehensible.
Duke was the best father he could be, considering his situation. He wanted what was best for them. I do think that after the second child, and knowing Pono's struggles, it was selfish to keep having sex with her. It should have been obvious to him that she had found a way around his "black coral tea" plan to keep her from getting pregnant.
Taken together, their loyalty to each other became a betrayal to their children. They had great love together, but their children suffered because of it. Pono supplied them with material things, but gave them nothing emotionally. It will be interesting to see if the cousins are able to each find fulfillment in their lives by the novel's end.
Love is a complicated subject because people see love in different aspects. Each individual has his or her own way of expressing love. Pono expresses her love through her determination to provide for her children. Even though she does not express enough emotion to her children, which in return causes them to resent her, she does believe that she has given them enough. Pono was a young child when she was neglected by her family. The only love that she has been able to express is to Duke. Without Duke’s guidance throughout the children’s lives, I believe Pono would not have known how to show that she cared at all. Even though through hard work she felt it was enough, without Duke she did not know a life of sensitivity.
Sometimes I feel very frustrated with Duke because I feel that he is a coward for not letting Pono admit that he exists. I understand that he is a proud person and that he feels that his children and grandchildren would not accept him. However, from my experience when it comes to family, I feel people will accept that person no matter what he or she looks like. I almost see family as a forced love because there is a connection between each other that you allow each individual to get away with certain problems. I feel that is why Pono feels so strongly about continuing a strong Hawaiian family and feels betrayed by her children for not continuing that bond. Without the background of Duke in the children’s lives, they struggle to see the significance. I feel honesty needs to be attached with love. Without an honest relationship, there will always be confusion. With confusion brings suspicion which leads to someone getting betrayed. Pono only knows love through Duke and without being able to talk about him with her family she struggles to see the significance of the resentment her children contains towards her. When Pono sees Duke or is able to talk about Duke she is alive again. There is passion in her life and without that passion she does not know how to express love.
I think in Pono's case her love for Duke is too much. It is extreme to the point of obsession. Her love and loyalty to Duke has left her weary of and sometimes unresponsive to the needs of her daughters as well as her granddaughters. By agreeing to keep the truth about Duke a secret, Pono has disrupted the communication between herself and the women and between the cousins as well. Her loyal to Duke should not betray the trust and openness that should always accompany the relationship between mothers, daughters, and granddaughters.
In examining the question “Is it possible to love too much?” I would have to say in Pono’s case the answer is no. She was abandoned by her family at a very young age and never gained the knowledge of how to love. All she knew was that her gift of dream-seeing frightened her family and they distanced themselves from her not only physically but also emotionally. This was her foundation of knowledge for love and unfortunately I think it affected her deeply. Did she love her daughters? I think that she loved them to the best of her ability to love. Since she was never a recipient of physical and emotional love until Duke entered her life she did not know how to express her love to her daughters. She provided for them in every way that she possibly could. Pono gave them a decent home and food along with a Catholic education which could not have been cheap. She worked very hard for them and exhausted herself at the pineapple factory so that they had the necessities of shelter, food and education. Duke taught her what knowledge she had and perhaps he should have taught her to express her love for her daughters as she expressed her love to him. I also think that many people perceive love differently. Some people think that financial support is love; some feel that emotional support is love, while some are led to believe that sex is love. Love can come in many forms and encompasses many things for different people. Knowledge and exposure is how we gain our own understanding of the definition of love.
My friend has been married for about 10 years and her husband provides her and her children with anything they could ever want. They lack for nothing materially, yet she doesn’t feel as though her love is reciprocated because her husband is not a physical or emotionally expressive man. He doesn’t express his feelings and he seems physically cold at times, yet if you ask him how he feels about his wife and kids he tells you that they are his whole world. He says that he could not exist without them and that they are what keep him moving forward in this world. So, I guess there are as many ways to love as there are definitions of what love is, therefore I do think that Pono loved her daughters and was as good a mother as she could be at the time. Perhaps if she had not been busying ensuring their survival and leaving to spend time with Duke she would have had more time with her daughters. Also, if Duke had been able to live with them as a family then perhaps Pono would have been a different person.
It seems unanimous that, while Pono faithfully suppplies the physical and even some slightly higher functioning needs of her daughters and grand daughters, such as good schooling, she fails to give them the emotional attention and nurturing young people need; all people need. Yet when she was asked to obey Ming's dieing wish, she faithfully carried it out, despite the fact she was required to break her promise to Duke. To me this shows that she did love her children and granddaughters, and was even willing to give to them. While I agree she was negligent, I think if Duke had been able to have a "normal" relationship with his family, Pono could have learned to give more to her children. I think it is quite possible that her daughters "failed" to teach her how to give in their personal relationship with Pono. Yet the problem there is that they were not given the example of how to give by Pono, which is the case in many of todays modern families, where such behavior follows a generational cycle of betrayal. I do feel Pono was capable of loyalty though, which she clearly gave to the utmost extreme for the only person that had ever given it equally back, Duke.
I understand completely what Renee is saying in her post, because Duke, having loved his daughters and family so much should have been able to overcome the cultural ideas that made him feel like he would have not been accepted the way he was. In a way he was ready to risk losing his family anyway, shown by the idea of Pono marrying someone else. Why then would he have not even risked the possibility of losing his family to possibly gain an intimacy in their lives? When looked at that way, it almost seems like Pono was a better if at the very least equal parent to her daughters than Duke. His offer to "allow" Pono to marry another, but not attempt to meet or even allow his daughters to know about him, seems selfish and maybe more an act of pride then extreme love. The question must be asked, did he really think Pono would ever carry out his offer? It reminds me of how he was so afraid to expose Pono to Leprosy, yet made love to her repeatedly before he knew she was immune. Duke betrayed Pono.
I find it very easy to love too much. Love is a wonderful emotion that can make the world seem perfect, however, love can also isolate one from the joys they had before love. With love being as powerful as it is downfalls do happen, a newly in love couple can forget friends, family, and themselves if they are not careful. When you find that special person, that one who makes you feel like the only one on earth, it makes you feel invincible. The rush that you get from being in love cannot be duplicated and you will do whatever it takes to hold to that feeling. I feel that is what happen to Pono.
In Shark Dialogues Pono loves Duke so much that she loses herself and the people around her. All Pono wanted was to spend time with Duke, she needed him and he needed her. But they love so much children came about, and that was still not enough to stop Pono from trying everything she possibly can to spend her entire life with Duke. Pono’s situation is a tricky one to say the least, love is what kept her alive, and love is what tore her apart. The love she had gave her strength to continue through the troubling times because she knew she would soon see Duke again. Love, however, was what made her miss moments with her daughters, and it enabled her to create that mother daughter bond that she yearned for later in her life.
Love is complex, but when used right it can save the world. When one is taken over by love there is always a possibility that person might damaged everyone around them except their lover. Many people depended on Pono’s love, but unfortunately the only person who got it was Duke. Love is like time once you spend it you cant take it back, and that is Pono did. Pono spent all her love on Duke, and when she realized it she had none left to spend with her daughters.
If Pono were a man would we feel differently about her relationship with her children? I am convinced we would. Pono did almost everything for her children, including, send them to a Catholic school. I would consider this better than average parenting. Just like almost every parent I know, a parents main goal is to offer their children a chance to live a better life than they had. Did Pono not do this? True, she did not “hug” her children enough but we are condemning a woman who was abandoned by her own mother and left to fend for herself? We are making a great assumption that Pono would posses some grand motherly instinct to pass on to her own children. Where did she learn these traits from. Her mother? The Asian men who she used to dream tell for? Or perhaps she leaned theses lessons while working sixteen hours in the Dole pineapple factory? I think not. I feel that considering the circumstances of Pono’s life she did fairly well.
I feel her relationship with Duke has also been unjustly scrutinized. As I mentioned earlier, Pono was abandoned and grew up living a hard life. Then she met someone who loved her despite all her problems and insecurities. Duke was a person who would not neglect or abandon her. When you live a life where everything and everybody that has been close to you has left you, then that one person who desides to stick around becomes very special. If we can blame Pono’s mother for neglecting her, would we not find the same fault with Pono if she left Duke during his moments of need?
After pondering the question of, is it possible to love somebody to much? I would have to say yes, because it can become an odd form obsession. There has to be balance between love and leading a healthy life for you and your family. For example, Pono had an immense love for Duke and would leave their children in circumstances that were not the healthiest for young girls to be left in. But Pono could not relate to some of these parenting thoughts because she was abandoned at a young age and didn’t have a proper father figure during her formative years. This cascaded into her emotionally not being able to relate to her daughters on a personal level. She gave them the best education that was available because she knew that it was best for them and their futures. Pono did not give the girls the emotional support that young people need, especially the mystery of the male of father figure in their life. Where the daughters did not know who their fathers were or any of their backgrounds and did not give them the support that they needed later in life.
I believe that Duke was not a good father to his daughters because they did not even know who their father was. I think Duke should have shared his horrid disease with his family and let his daughters know that they had one father that loved them unconditionally. It was the secret of not knowing where they came from and not knowing the connection of the family that made the daughters over analyze the situation and think the worse for many years. The questions are hard because everybody is different and we all react wild ways when put in horrible conditions, and Duke and Pono where in some of the worst. I believe that you can love somebody too much, to the point of ignoring other people that you should also love and nurture and care for.
As I have confidently stated from the beginning of Shark Dialogues up until I concluded the novel, Pono was never completely “of this world.” Shrouded in mysticism throughout the story, Pono’s almost oracle/goddess existence begs one critical question: if she is not entirely human, why should we, as readers, require her to love as a human mothers love? And though I do believe a person has the capacity to love another “too much,” Pono does not fall under this category. So, is Pono a good mother and wife? Absolutely. I believe that because she exists on a higher plane than her family members, so to speak, we have to take her exhibitions of love at face value. She is merely showing care and affection the only way she knows how. We are able to examine this devotion in her obsession with Duke. The one instance that I consider to be exceptionally poignant in demonstrating her superhuman loyalty was when she licks/comes in direct contact with Duke’s oozing sores as he sleeps, hoping—begging—to be afflicted with Ma’i Pake. Though most of us have felt the raw passion and devotion of having been in love at some point in our lives, would we be willing to lick the oozing wound of our loved one to join them in their pain—even if it means we too will become ill and die? Pono’s supreme loyalty and devotion to Duke simply transcends the human concept of love—we simply must accept it for what it is.
Just as Pono’s demonstration of love for Duke leaves us all spellbound, her neglect of her daughters is even that much more perplexing. After seeing Pono love her husband more passionately and intensely than arguably any other woman in the history of mankind, how could this same woman possibly abandon her daughters—offspring carrying the lineage of her beloved Duke!? Again, after battling and battling in my head, I reached a very familiar and relaxing conclusion: Pono is not a woman at all—I simply needed to leave her be and trust that she handled the situation the best and only way she knows how. Why do I trust that she raises her daughters the correct way? Because Duke trusts her and believes in her. And that is good enough for me. So, as we all know, her daughters grow up encountering a few stumbling blocks to say the least. But Pono, despite being very proud, was never too proud—you can almost picture her weeping in her bed at night, her heart aching, wishing she could change the way she mothered her daughters. And though she was a confident woman, she would most likely admit that she was by no means a perfect mother—I guess that was her human side rearing its ugly head…
Ultimately, it is difficult to relate situations in my own life to the family dynamic that existed in Shark Dialogues, as I have yet to encounter anything so amazing, so supernatural, so raw, in my life. But, by the time I leave this Earth, if I can experience one-tenth of the passion and loyalty shared by Duke and Pono, than I will be able to say that I have lived.
"When is love too much? When is it not enough?" (149) Love is a very powerful emotion. I do not think that one could love too much. If you love too much, it is not called love anymore, but obsession and extreme infatuation. It is an unhealthy emotional state to become obsessed or extremely infatuated with something or someone.
In "Shark Dialogues" Pono loves Duke very strongly. I do not think she loves him too much, because then she would have refused to leave him and completely neglected her life at home. If she was infatuated or obsessed she would have left her children completely.
I found that Pono did not love her children enough. She was never around to really raise her children. Sure, she paid for them to go to Catholic school, but money and nice things does not account for time lost. She could have spent as much time as possible getting to know her daughters and encouraging them with their interests instead of discouraging them. I think her girls would have been much happier had they had more time spent with their Mother. Nothing is more important than family time. I think the girls would have been able to look back on their childhoods and have fond memories of being with their mother, if she would have put as much love into her relationship with them as she did with Duke.
In the novel, The Shark Diaolgues, the question is asked “When is love too much? When is it not enough?” (149) The way that I feel is that love could never be too much. I am a hopeless romantic and I am in love with the man of my dreams. I do not feel that I can ever love him too much; I feel when you are really in love with someone, that your love grows more and more. I feel the greatest gift that we have on this earth is the ability to love another whether it is a family member, friend or lover. I do not feel that you can ever love someone too much. On the other hand feel, I feel that you can love someone, not enough. When is love not enough? Love is not enough when you love selfishly. If you love for only your own personal gain then you do not love that person enough. Love is not enough when the other one cheats on you through either an emotional or a physical affair. To me, this is the draw breaker. When someone has feeling for another person I do not feel that they would love you enough, because not only are they giving half or more of their heart to someone else, but in a matter of speaking they are telling you that they do not feel that you and your love is enough for them. To the question whether I think Pono was a good mother to her children? I would have to say no, however I do feel that she was the best mother that she could be a the time. She gave her children all she could in regards to her situation, but I do not feel that her love was enough for them. Do I feel that Duke was a good father? My answer t o that question is yes. I feel that due to his circumstances he did all he could, and even though he was not truthful to them he did it all, in regards to because he loved them and wanted what was best for them. I feel that he was a good father even though he wasn’t able to share much of who he was with his children. What experiences in my life had made me relate to these questions? Well as I stated before, I am in love with not only the love of my life, but my best friend. We have been together for 9 years and throughout these nine years he has only taught me how to love unselfishly. He shows me everyday what love is all about and I couldn’t ask for more. He gives so much to me, and never asks for anything in return. I am so thankful to have him in my life, and through reading these questions my only answer could be that love cold never be too much. On the other hand I can speak in terms of why I feel the way I do in regards to when is love not enough. I had stated before that love is not enough when the other loves selfishly, or betrays the other by making love to someone else. There has been this betrayal in my family and to keep matters confidential I would rather not say who, but when it happened, believe me when I say that, this is when love is not enough. This sort of betrayal is one that can not be forgotten, perhaps for some people as I have learned to do is to forgive, but the forgetting is what can not be done. Even though time has past, these wounds have not been healed and for this, I say this is when love is not enough. Love is not enough when someone betrays not only you, but your family even though I feel loved by this person; the simple act is what has me say this. I do feel that this love can be regained and proven worthy, but in my heart I can say that if my love, found another heart to make love with, this is when his love would not be enough for me to feel the complete love that one should have with another, as Pono and Duke had shared.
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