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Steven Harms
English 114B
Professor Topf
17 March 2014
What is Marriage?
Many people have a different idea of what marriage exactly is. Many people
believe that it is a life long commitment and they take the meaning of the word
forever seriously. Some take the word to mean a bond between people that can
become broken at any time when two people become bored or dull of one
another. Marriage is defined in this book as something people take for granted and
dont actually mean till death due us part.
The first reason why I would believe this is to look at the before and after of
this book. Before the cure was introduced marriages were like what they were
today. Sure there were divorces but people didnt get a divorce so frequently before
the cure was released. After the cure it seemed like everything was going chaotic
with marriages because the cure was introduced. In fact it seemed like it was tearing
apart every ones relationship down one by one.
. The title of the page itself is Theyre all getting divorced, which shows the
tremendous impact the cure to aging had on the people. In this chapter we see that
the divorce lawyers are making a decent amount of profit due to the amount of
divorces going up. In fact people seem to be jumping for the position to become a
divorce lawyer.
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We must first ask ourselves why are people getting divorced in the first
place? Are they just getting bored of one another? Or are they seeing that with a long
term relationship people become more interested in other people. To answer these
questions we must first look at an article written by a very well known psychologist.
Known by the name of Alan booth. It says studies have consistently shows marital
timing to affect quality of the marriage itself (source). It goes on to say that once a
person has come to a certain period of time when people become sexually dull with
one another the people who are in that marriage will go on to look for other mates.
In fact it also talks about how certain animals in the animal kingdom leave their
mate once they have become a certain age.
So why is it that people are doing this so rapidly once the cure got released?
The answer for that is sudden realization. Once people realized that they were
going to stay with each other for hundreds of more years they started to become
dull of one another. In fact the realization of the whole thing hit them so hard that it
seemed like they tried to divorce each other the next day.
Then this issue starts to cross over into some other issues in the book, which
is why I thought this issue was one of the most important ones. It then starts to
cross over peoples morals. For example it starts to make the person doing the
annulments to question if he even wanted to do it himself. He states that Im a
traditional man and once the 20 years of marriage is over then you soiled the
sacred vow they made when the became married.
It then starts to cross over into the religion aspect. Which states in the bible
that divorce is a sin. In fact the pope even made the cure deemed as unreligious and
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should be banned by people who participate in religious activities. It then makes
people want to question their own religious beliefs once the law has been passed
which could have also made the divorce rate gone up. Since people were not obeying
the church and its practices.
Again we must first look at the beginning middle and end to fully
understand the evolution of the whole thing. Now that we understand the motive of
why people are getting divorced, now we must look at how certain obstacles affect
it. In the beginning things start off pretty slow. In fact the beginning even though it
seems pretty severe is nothing like how the rest of the book plays out.
In the middle of the book we see that things are only getting worse. People
are barely married in the world. During the middle everything is low. Resources,
people married, jobs you name it. In fact people are getting jobs working as a
divorce lawyer to even pay for some of the things in the world that have already not
already been gone.
In the end we see that absolutely nobody is married and everybody that was
in a relationship has either broken up or got a divorce. Which in the end just shows
why Alan booth is correct. In fact it perfectly goes intact with what he said in his
article. Which is in time people become either bored of their partner and divorce or
go find somebody else who could help energize their life again.
In fact this goes with the theory of evolution. The reason why I say that is
because we are programmed to mate with multiple partners to help keep our
species alive. In fact the whole idea of marriage actually goes against what we are
programmed in our DNA to do. Which is why I think the author is trying to almost in
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a way humiliate humanity and take the people back in this book to a more
uncivilized time to show humanitys true intentions and try to shed some light on
why people are getting divorced in the book.
The next thing must look at is how does this whole idea about people
constantly getting divorced have to do anything with the plot and characters. Well
first off it has to with the plot tremendously. First off it is showing what kind of
affect this cure is having on the general public. Another thing s to try and poke fun of
humanity and try to show their true intentions. In fact I believe the author is trying
to see through humanitys bullshit and tries to show our true intentions as people.
It also has a pretty huge affect on the characters in the book. First off it is
affecting johns sense of mind. What I mean by that is it is showing john how
humanity really is. I believe that the whole marriage thing is actually depressing
john. The reason why I say that is because of his parents. His mother passed away
and he only had his dad at the beginning of the book. He sees these people as almost
waste less and I believe it shows john how people take marriage for granted which
could have also made john go crazy in the later part of the book.
In the later part of the book john becomes what is called an end specialist
which is assisted suicide. Why does john take such a drastic change into a happy
man into a person who is willing to help murder a person? The reason I believe is
that he becomes an end specialist to almost in a way get back at humanity. He is
disappointed in them getting divorced, doing drugs, murder and he sees that there is
nothing good left in the world. So therefore he becomes and end specialist to help
put and end to the peoples misery.
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So is the author using a form of critique in this book to try and show how silly
humanity and the general public can be? Absolutely! I believe he is tying to poke fun
of the world and how we view marriage. The way he describes the population in the
book is that they are lazy, selfish people who are just there to please themselves. He
is trying to parallel their population to ours. He is basically saying that people in the
real world arent trying to fix a problem but rather just throw it away. He is also
saying how selfish we are. For example he talks about how people came barging in
to the divorce attorney to try and get divorced. He is trying to say we dont take
what marriage is seriously. In fact we just take it for granted and if things get to hard
or difficult or we just want to have fun we can always through away the marriage
and start over again with a different mate.
The book stance is that people are getting divorced because they are living
forever. Why would they want to stay with the same partner for hundreds and
hundreds more years when they can just have an endless amount of mates forever
instead of just settling down for one? So what can I make with what the book says? I
can say that I believe the book says divorce is wrong period. The book and the
author are trying to poke fun at how people are so easy to abandon a commitment
they are supposed to have forever.
My side is that divorce is completely wrong in the first place. I have
personally come from a family where divorce and the idea of divorce has prevailed
pretty heavily. I have to agree with the author and say that people in this book and
in real life are far to lazy and instead of trying to fix an issue people just try to
through it away like trash. I also believe that the cure has a lot to due with why
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people are getting divorced so frequently in the book. I believe that people dont
truly want to be with the same mate forever like they say during their marriage.
Instead people just want to have fun and the words they speak during the marriage
ceremony are just words to them.
? Well yes it does and in fact there is unfortunately a lot of information on
this issue and how the divorce rate of people are going up drastically. For example
an article by the New York Times sates that this era of stress and financial matters
has had a dramatic toll and divorces. This article shows that stress and financial
matters could be the cause of divorce in this time period but how does that relate to
the book? Could the cure be putting to much stress on people that they have to get a
divorce or else they will go crazy? The answer is absolutely. People now have a
stress to stay with their partner forever instead of cheating with someone else.
Then there is the fact about money issues. In the Post mortal people are constantly
fighting for a job and in the beginning of the book people are having a lot of stress
due to the religion aspect but also what this cure could possibly bring. Also the cost
for the cure was known to be pretty expensive. Therefore I believe that the news
article was absolutely correct on why people got a divorce. Which is stress and
money caused by the so-called cure. Therefore marriage is defined in this book just
that, which is just words and in the end the words till death due as part are just
words.

End notes: Right now this essay is mostly a literary analysis. It isnt until the
end that you begin to touch on outside relevant material. Theres a ways to do
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prompt A while injecting real life into it to form an argument. You also fracture
your essay into separate prompt points. Dont. You need to create an essay that
transitions naturally from one topic to the next. It jars your reader to see this
format.
Revisit your thesis as this will help guide the rest of how your revise. Some ideas to
look at (externally) would be: if Magary is being critical of marriage, how does this
relate to different forms? Western culture is predominantly love marriages which
is vastly different from Eastern arranged marriages. Do the statistics of divorce
change between the two? There are obviously social reasonings behind both types
and these could also be discussed. These are just initial ideas that would need to be
adjusted depending on what direction you go with your thesis.

Sources: I see a Works Cited page but I see relatively few quotes being used. I also
question how relative some of the quotes are. You need to make sure you are using
sources that reinforce your thesis, not just merely restate or fill in parts of the essay.

Grammar: Abundance of syntactic (sentence level) errors fragments, verb tense
agreement, etc.. to the point that it is effecting the meaning of the essay.
Tone: Much of the essay is written too casually. You can have your own voice but it
needs to be intentional. If you are using casual diction without a reason then you
run the risk of loosing credibility. When in doubt, stick with a formal academic
structure rather than a conversational, relax manner.

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Work Cited

Banks, John. "Divorce, Separations and Annulments." - News, 16 Mar. 2014. Web. 16
Mar. 2014.

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Booth, Alan, and John N. Edwards. JSTOR. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.

"Coping With Divorce, Single Parenting, and Remarriage: A Risk and Resiliency
..."Google Books. Web. 16 Mar. 2014

Kim, Hyun Sik. JSTOR.. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Magary, Drew. The Postmortal: A Novel. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.

Meikle, James. "Divorces on Rise among Over-60s." Theguardian.com. Guardian
News and Media, 07 Aug. 2013. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.

"The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for
Women and Children in Am ... | POPLINE.org." The Divorce Revolution: The
Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in Am ... |
POPLINE.org.Web. 14 Mar. 2014.