Alisha Knight said:
I've recently come to the conclusion that the best romances tend to be those with a tragic ending – Romeo and Juliet perhaps being the classic example - and this fic certainly has that heart-breaking quality.
I wasn't going to comment on this fic any more, but Alisha's post prompts me to add something.
I agree with Alisha that Romeo and Juliet is indeed the one of the best romances ever, and that it owes much of its greatness to its tragic ending. But there is much more to Romeo and Juliet than the ending of their story. Like all Shakespeare tragedies, their story is a relentlessly logical one. The protagonists break the rules of their society, and therefore their story must end tragically. In Romeo and Juliet's case, the rule they break is that they must have nothing to do with each other, because their families hate each other. That is a situation that is heartbreakingly familiar to many young people in many parts of the world.
But Romeo and Juliet fall in love so passionately that they are willing to break the rules for the sake of their love. That, too, is something that many young couples in many countries will recognize.
Romeo and Juliet both risk their lives. Romeo risks his life when he breaks into the Capulets' garden just so he can look at Juliet. He risks his life when he, after his secret marriage to his beloved, spends the night in her bedroom.
Juliet most certainly risks her life when she drinks the potentially deadly potion that the priest brings her. That situation, when Juliet drinks the potion so that she will appear dead, is very similar to what Lois does, when she asks Superman to freeze her so that she will appear to be dead.
But Juliet and Lois agree to become almost-dead for different reasons. Juliet wants to escape an enforced marriage to a man she doesn't love, so that she can escape with her loved one, Romeo. Her motives are logically driven by (selfish) love and her own needs, in contrast to Lois, who is driven purely by altruism. Clark's parents mustn't die! Also, it is more obvious that Juliet will escape her enforced marriage by appearing dead than it is that Lois will save Clark's parents by appearing dead.
When Romeo hears a rumor that Juliet is dead, he procures a deadly poison so that he can kill himself, if the rumor proves to be true. He will not live on without his loved one! When he finds her and believes that she is dead, he does indeed drink the deadly poison. Juliet wakes up and finds Romeo dead, and she promptly commits suicide, too.
Now compare Clark's behaviour with Romeo's behaviour. Where are the similarities? Clark freezes Lois, even though he must realize that the consequences could be dire. Imagine that Romeo would, say, bury Juliet alive and hopefully dig her out again before she died so that he could save his parents! That sounds contrived, doesn't it? Also, it seems unthinkable to me that Romeo would deliberately risk Juliet's life, considering the fact that he loved her more than life itself.
What are Clark's reasons for freezing Lois? Either he is the sort of meek person who can't say no to the woman he loves (I'm sorry, officer, I know I froze her, but she did ask me to do it, scout's honor), or else he truly did prefer his parents over her (Okay, Juliet, if you say so, I'll bury you and it may kill you, but I hope it will save my parents).
Romeo killed himself when he thought Juliet was dead. Clark, in my opinion, didn't seem overly distressed by what had happened to Lois in Terry's fic, other than that it was a strain for him to have to work with such a bitch, and it was a relief to him when she quit. Maybe Countrygurl74 summed it up best:
I Liked this story. I can see Clark Falling for someone else eventually.
Yes, indeed. So this was not much of a classic tragedy. Rather it was a story of an altruistic woman who had her character destroyed when she risked her life to save her beloved's parents, and it was a story of her former beloved washing his hands off of her, when she suffered a personality change due to the life-threatening freezing he had subjected her too.
I just wanted to point out that Terry's story should not in any way be compared to Shakespeare's classic tragedy.
I think the main difference between Shakespeare's tragedy and Terry's fic is that Shakespeare wrote about mutual love. Terry's fic is about one-sided love - Lois's love for Clark - a love that is horribly disappointed, and therefore it is turned into its opposite. Lois loved Clark so much that she was willing to die
for his parents. But there is little if anything in Terry's fic to suggest that Clark truly loved her back. When Lois discovers that Clark (or Superman) thinks so little of her that he is willing to sacrifice her for his parents' sake, she is so disappointed in him and in Superman (who to her was the ultimate symbol of good) that she doesn't believe in the forces of good in the world anymore. Altruism and goodness have let her down, and she no longer believes in those concepts.
When I look at it that way, then Terry's fic makes sense to me.
Ann
