All Is Fair in Love and Bel Canto

All is Fair In Love and Bel Canto

Anne Patchett, in her novel Bel Canto, displays many reoccurring motifs or "narrative details" throughout her writing. Both intentional and unintentional motifs are present throughout the story. This helps to expand the depth of the narrative and to heighten the connection between a reader and the text. A particular intentional motif, love, and the many shapes and forms of expression love can take, reoccurs very often throughout the novel. This motif of love is connected to the theme of the novel, the human condition. All humans have the need to feel love. Love, while not being an entirely necessary component for survival, is one of the largest pieces of the human condition. People may dedicate their lives to the love of others, the love of an art, or love of a lifestyle or cause.

One of the first appearing examples of the love motif occurs on page five of the novel. Mr. Hosokawa's affinity for the opera is being explained.

"Certainly he knew (though he did not completely understand) that opera wasn't for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love. Not his wife, his daughters, or his work. (Patchett 11)

This quote serves as a window to view into Hosokawa's love life. While many people have a traditional medium of love, a spouse, children, close friends or relatives, Hosokawa has taken up a life where all of the time he is not dedicating himself to his work, he is dedicating himself to the opera. While not traditional, Hosokawa's love seems even more pure and driven, because he has set all of his intimate feelings on one subject. This connects Hosokawa to Roxanne Coss through his love of the opera, and because he is not as attached to his family and children (and therefore his moral obligations to them), Hosokawa is able to pursue his relationship with Roxanne without much question.

Anne Patchett shows that love can change as the human condition changes as well. At first the story shows Simon Thibault's relationship with his wife as somewhat dull marriage of necessity. The narrative states "in Paris, Simon Thibault had loved his wife, though not always faithfully or with a great deal of attention" In this line it seems as if Simon and his wife are almost in love out of necessity; sure, the two are married. Any diplomat in the world of today must surely have a wife, but for these two it is an almost empty marriage. However, when Simon and his wife move to the host country so that he can take on the position of ambassador, he is able to see her in a new light.

"he found her again, like something he never knew was missing. Like a song that he had memorized in his youth and had then forgotten. Suddenly, clearly he could see her, The way he had been able to see her at twenty, not her physical self at twenty, because in every because in every sense she was moiré beautiful to him now, but he felt that old sensation, the leaping of his heart, the reckless flush of desire. he would find her in the house, cutting fresh paper to line the shelves or lying across their bed writing letters to their daughters who were attending university in Paris, and he was breathless. Had she always been like this? Had he never known? Had he known and then somehow, carelessly, forgotten? In this country, with its dirt roads and yellow rice he loved her, he was her."(Patchett 36)

Here, as Thibault's human conditions change, his job, his location in the world, his satisfaction with his life in general, the love he feels for his wife changes as well. Thibault's love grows from a minor attraction, to endearment. Thibault becomes enamored with his wife Edith, drawing them together during the beginning of the book, where they are first taken hostage, and keeping them together even after the two are separated.

In addition to being felt from person to person, and person to art, both returned in some way, Patchett also shortly explores the realm of unreturned love. The feelings between Roxanne Coss and her accompanist are far from mutual. The narrative even goes so far as to state in reference to Roxanne's feelings for the accompanist, that "the truth was, she had hated the accompanist a little"(79). Roxanne's distaste for the accompanist actually stems from the accompanists overzealous love for her. "the accompanist grabbed her hand and told her about the impossible burden of love he had been living with. Didn't she know? All those days of being next to her, of hearing her sing"(70). Roxane's negative feelings toward the accompanist could have set her up for relationships in the future. Being totally free from the burden of the love of others and possibly being vulnerable from the untimely death of the accompanist, she is set up to be approached by many characters throughout the story.

With this narrative, Patchett describes another form of love in its most basic, animalistic form; Lust. While there are several examples of lust throughout the narrative, the possibly most blatant and detailed takes place on page 225.

"It thrilled him when she sang the loudest, the highest. If he didn't have his rifle to hold in front of him he would have embarrassed himself every time, her singing brought about such a raging, aching, passion that his penis stiffened before she had finished her first line, growing harder and harder as the song progressed until he was lost in a confusion of pleasure and terrible pain, the stock of his rifle brushing