Instructions: After reading the excerpt from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged write an essay answering the below questions.  Make sure that you support your responses by offering paraphrased corroboration from the text or examples from your own life. Your response should be no longer than 3 typewritten pages and should be submitted through the course website. Your essay should be a cohesive composition with complete paragraphs and sentences (not numerically organized answers), with proper spelling and punctuation, and satisfying all of the homework formatting requirements. 

1.What is Cherryl’s view about love?  Which of our classifications of eros best fits Cherryl’s love of Jim?  Make sure that you include textual support in your answer. 

2.On what does Jim think love should be based?  Which of our classification of love best fit Jim’s expectations for Cherryl’s love?  Provide textual evidence for your view.

3.Which view of love (Cherryl’s or Jim’s) is most conducive for a successful life-long marriage?  Why?

(1) Cherryl takes a fairly pragmatic view of love, especially in comparison to the more abstract, undefinable quality Jim demands from it. She has had some concrete goals in the relationship, such as trying to understand her partner, although apparently without much success. By asking directly, she tries to find out what Jim needs from her, but he resents the questions. He seemingly expects her to know instinctively what he needs; by “feeling” rather than asking. This is not very realistic, and the marriage is suffering as a result, although there are other underlying reasons.

Eros as choice is the best designation for Cherryl's love of Jim, and can be further categorized as the subjective variety: “Choosing to love because of the subjectively valuable qualities of another.” She says to him, “I loved you for your courage, your ambition, your ability. But it wasn't real, any of it." Maybe she based her choice on the virtues she valued, and wanted to find. Sometimes we can be deceived, however, or fool ourselves into believing something the evidence doesn't support.  It's also a factor that Jim was wealthy and represented a way out of poverty for her. Her choice to marry him was influenced by this fact, even if it was not the main impetus.

(2) Jim is a man who doesn't seem to love himself very much‒ his wealth was inherited and therefore he doesn't feel that he's earned his success. He's unethical in business, using government ties to unfair advantage against competitors; taking credit for the work of another family member; in short, he's a failure and a miserable human being. Small wonder that he would be manipulative and dishonest in his approach to love. By “rescuing” a woman that was far below him in financial status, he hoped to have someone to love him unconditionally and who would not question his character flaws.

Categorizing Jim's version of eros proves a little more difficult. There is some element of choice for him as well; he made decisions on who to seek as a partner with clear ulterior motives, as referenced above. But there is also a strong element of eros as passion‒ with an emphasis on the more negative aspects: The conflicting desires, such as text example “I want someone to love me for who I am AND I want someone who will be X, Y, and Z (or someone I can train to be X, Y, and Z).”  Or the temporary insanity, which in Jim's case seems to be protracted. It's a sad reality for both Jim and Cherryl that they have reached this nadir in less than a year of marriage.

(3) Cherryl's view of love is the more realistic, and more likely to result in long-term or even life-long success; however you need to have both partners be compatible in their views or it will not work. As our readings on eros as passion demonstrate, it is not a sustainable aspect of love, and especially if those passions are mostly negative, such as Jim's self-loathing and manipulative tendencies.

Eros as choice has the advantage of more informed decisions and expectations within a relationship. While ideally there should be passion as well, and emotion, a marriage requires teamwork and compromise in times when the passion isn't present.