The Love of My Life: Overview
In the short story “The Love of My Life,” two teenagers make one bad decision and their lives are changed forever. The author, T. Coraghessan Boyle, wrote the story based on an actual news story that had occurred a few years back. The author does a great job of making the relationship between Jeremy and China seem so wonderful and almost innocent, that it is hard to be angry with them. The two characters in the story, Jeremy and China, are young and are head over heels for each other.
The very first line of the story is all it takes to make the reader realize that these two youngsters share the true meaning of love, “they wore each other like a pair of socks. ” All of that changes when the two find out that China is pregnant. Instead of properly handling their situation, they have the baby and dispose of it in a dumpster at a motel. Although the story has a very upsetting plot, you can’t help but feel some sympathy toward the characters. The beginning of the story starts out describing the great, young love that Jeremy and China had.
They did everything with each other, spent almost every waking moment together, and rarely ever fought. Both teenagers were on a great track in life; graduating at the top of their high school class, both going to top colleges and well-liked by most. They would tell each other “I love you” more times in a day than they could keep track of. Every time they walked into a room they would kiss. They seemed to have the perfect relationship. Then, the summer before college would commence, they went on a week-long camping trip alone.
Of course, being alone, they had the opportunity to have sex and enjoy their time together. Obviously caught in the heat of the moment, knowing they were out of condoms, they had sex anyway. One irrational decision led to their lives changing forever. Before going to school in the fall, China learned that she was pregnant. Out of immaturity, and fear, she decides to do nothing about it and hide it, hoping it would perhaps just go away. Jeremy is just as clueless and scared as she is, and goes along with her decision.
When the night comes that China is to have her baby, she calls up Jeremy and they meet at the motel they had met at many times before. When she arrives there, Jeremy is waiting at the door. When she walks by him, “they didn’t kiss- they didn’t even touch- and then she was on the bed. ” By this time, they have almost completely lost all of the love in their relationship and all their fighting has just pulled them apart more and more. Hours passed, and she finally had the baby. After the trauma of giving birth, all she could say to Jeremy was, “get rid of it. Jeremy, not knowing what else to do, listened to her order. After driving China back to school, he returned to the motel, wrapped the baby in a plastic bag, and disposed of it in a dumpster. Like most secrets, this one didn’t last very long. Both teenagers were soon arrested. On the day of their court appearance, China writes Jeremy a note saying, “I love you, will always love you no matter what. It is apparent that she still loves him so much, but it is hard to tell whether Jeremy still feels the same at this point in the story. All he can say to her before they part is, “you told me to get rid of it. A part in the story that seems to be very ironic is that China always would joke with Jeremy that she would “never be like those breeders that bring their puffed-up squalling little red-faced babies to class. ” Sadly, the thing that they had once laughed at others for happened to them. It can also become so intense and cause people to do crazy things, just like the characters in “The Love of My Life. ” They may not have killed one another, but they did murder their baby. They were blinded by their love and still so immature that they did not know how to deal with such a serious situation like that.
