"Love is...an all consuming emotion that encompasses your entire being.... love is pain and regret and contentment and overjoyment and friendship...love is the sweet and the sour.... love is the one thing that we as people all have the capacity to feel...love is the one pure emotion that humans long for and dream of and don't realize when it's there."
             What is love? That is a question that has plagued mankind for centuries and has yet to be truly defined. Although we do not know how to define love, that has not stop us from attempting to. Throughout literature, love and romance have been popular themes. Remember the classics like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty? These and countless other stories have shown us the nature of love. But it seems to me that love has always been depicted as somewhat of a fairytale, with prince charming sweeping the princess on to his white horse and riding off into the sunset where the two will live happily ever after.
             I know every little girl dreams of prince charming. But is that all it is? Dreams? We would like to think that this dream is reality, but we know that is not the case. Love is so much more. It's not a fairytale world of happily ever afters, love takes hard work, patience, and understanding and it's not all daffodils and roses, it can be painful and sad. It's something you have to work at, and not everyone has the strength it takes to make it work. That is the reality of love. In Martin Eden, a novel written by the late Jack London, love is a major theme amongst two main characters, Martin (the story's protagonist), and Ruth. Theirs is not a fairytale love, although the character Martin may think it so at first, it is in fact a love story of reality, of the true society that we live in, where the prince and princess may not be together in the end. It is the truth, though it may be hard to face.
             Martin Eden was a sailor who strived for a better life, the life of th...