When we talk about love

What’s the difference between first love and true love? Most of the teenagers cannot tell the difference when they first fall in love. This novel “Forever…”, is a story about a 16- year-old girl named Katherine who thought her first love would be her entire life relationship. While Katherine first met Michael, they were attracted to each other, and then they were deeply in love. The moment Katherine fell head over heel in love with Michael, she decided to give her virginity to him. After that, Katherine’s parents put their relationship to the test by separating Katherine from Michael the whole summer to see if Michael was her true love. It turned out that Katherine couldn’t feel the same love for Michael like before, because somebody else she knew in the tennis summer camp stayed inside her heart. After she realized how much she wanted to give up this relationship, she stopped writing any letters to Michael. On the day when Michael showed up in her camp, she made up her mind to break up with him.

I think this novel is a great book for young adults who have fallen or want to fall in love. Once teenagers fall in love, they tend to have the desire of sexual intercourse. However, this book sends a message to readers that finding the best way for teenagers themselves to avoid pregnancy is an important issue. Just as in the story, Katherine took pills, which might be considered as an unsuitable step by religious groups, but physical craving makes teenagers curious most of the time. In the story, the author was audacious to write the issue about “sex” related to teenage love as such. Back in 1970s, when the book was written, people in this society were still too conservative to talk about “sex” or even to actually do it without regard to the social taboos. In the period of time of sexual revolution, Judy Blume, the author, put this issue into her story to convey her notion of sexual intercourse and also the ways of contraception. This novel subverted the 1970s society for sure, and then it became the New York Times bestseller later on.

Sex? It’s still a popular topic to teenagers. For some reason, lots of people are interested in it, but feel ashamed to discuss it. “Sex” is just a word to describe human nature, or even the basis of any species. The meaning of sex is basically “to carry on”. There were some certain reasons for humans to highlight it so as “to have fun”, and it’s now a word which is banned by the older generation. Maybe we shouldn’t know such thing, as the elder said; maybe we shouldn’t even mention it. For so many reasons, people are lacking in a pure heart or the proper knowledge of it. This book set a good example to describe how “humanity” has emphasized this word, and how we should see it from other sides; in time, we might see it’s only about “love”.