Interpretation Essay

There is only one happiness in life -- to love and to be loved. According to George Sand. This quote goes well with this story because two young people fell in love with each other and died in the end because of it. This myth is going to be looked at in three different ways, natural, social and psychological.

Pyramus and Thisbe were two young people who loved each other dearly. They grew up next to each other with only a wall separating them. That single wall had a hole in it that they could whisper sweet nothings through to each other all night long. Their parents did not agree to their relationship and would not allow them to be together so they had to keep their relationship a secret. Every night since they discovered that they loved each other they would talk through the wall until morning. One night they decided that just talking was not enough. They wanted to see, feel, and touch each other. So one night they decided to go to the Tomb of Ninus. Thisbe went and waited for her young lover to come but after a long time he had not shown up. She soon saw a lioness. She ran before the lioness got to her and lost her cloak in doing so. The lioness, mouth bloody from a recent kill, came upon the cloak and tore it to shreds. This is what Pryamus found and hunted down the lioness thinking the big cat killed his love. Thisbe realizing that she left and Pryamus did not know of the lioness went back and found him dead. She took his sword and stabbed herself through the heart not wanting to live now that her love was dead.

To look at the myth in the natural is a way to look at who and what they were or are. To look at the basics of them, at the physical part of them. They were young people who would have become lovers if given the chance. They were human and on were male and the other female. They represented love and youth. It is important to look at it this way to understand the basics of them and what they represented.

The next way to look at this myth is socially. To look at it in a social way is to understand these two lovers in their environment to see how society would look at these to being lovers and to wonder if it was wrong or right. On a social level they were seen as youthful and full of energy. And since they were young it would be easy to say that they wanted to rebellion against their parents. Or they could probably be looked at as young romantics who were full of passionate youth and that they were letting their emotions get the better of them. Or that they were just innocent youths caught up in what they thought was something grand.

To look at it in a psychological way is to go even further into their being. To look at their emotions and how they might even represent something in us or what we want and are afraid to voice. To look at it in a psychological way is to delve into the mind and maybe even the soul. To look at it this way, the myth can be interpreted in many different complex ways. It could be seen as a passionate forbidden love that we all wish for or want. That passionate rush of knowing you are defying your parents, that it feels good, and that it is for a good reason, love. Or it could be seen as a rebellion against the parents for no reasons but to rebel. It could the frustration of wanting something, finally getting close to it and losing it right at the end.

There is only one happiness in life-- to love and to be loved. This myth proves that, instead of living the rest of her life out Thisbe decided to die along with her love because she loved him so much and did not even want death to separate them. To look a myth in three different ways, naturally, socially, and psychologically, is to understand a myth in a totally different way then to just read it. It is a way to know what a myth represents and to explain why we are the way we are. That is why they are still told even today