Love and Selfishness in Love in L.A. by Dagoberto Gilb Essay -- Love i

Love and Selfishness inLove in L.A. by Dagoberto Gilb Love in L.A., written by Dagoberto Gilb, is a history full of irony and threefold themes. The story is set in Hollywood during the summer time. Written in third person objective, Love in L.A. guides the reader along through the story as opposed to an omniscient point of view. The story begins with Jake driving on the freeway. He is so enraptured by his daydream of better possibilities that he ends up smacking the car ahead of him. Jake considers driving away but instead he stops and finds out that the owner of the Toyota he hit was a ravishing girl. From there, Jake switches into his smooth talker role with Mariana. Jake then tries to con her by saying he doesnt have any insurance and assures her that he will pay for it. As he drives away, he sees Mariana behind him writing down the license plate numbers that he stole from a nonher car. The main characters in this story are Jake and Mariana. Jake is a stagnant and flat chara cter. Throughout the story, he shows himself as a somewhat lazy and rather overly conceited kind of guy. When Gilb describes how Jake, considered driving medieval the Toyota. and how, he considered giving a real phone number but went against that idea and made one up, it gives the reader a sense of how sleazy Jake is. In the end, he has not changed but yet seems even worse and more like a con artist. Mariana is more of an enigma then Jake since the author does not go into great detail about her, there is little characterization to go on. Generally, Mariana is a stagnant character because she is a normal girl with the corresponding suspicious tendencies as most other human beings. Love in L.A. contains many symbols ... ...d Russel Crowe, the couple get together and break up numerous quantify simply because of their mutual fear of intimacy and commitment. Another worthy example of this fear of engagement is the 1999 movie Love Stinks, starring french Stewart and Bill Bellamy. Fr ench Stewarts girlfriend demands that he marry her but he refuses to do so. This is obviously due to his definite fear of closeness and commitment. Another attribute of human nature, displayed in this story, is the tendency to be selfish. When people try to evade taxes, it is because they want all their money for themselves and thus are acting avaricious. Another example of this is when people do not donate to charity. This shows an abundance of stinginess as well as greed. Essentially, Love in L.A. addresses two main inherent qualities of human beings, the want for love and the continuous capacity to be selfish.