There is one special excerpt at the beginning of Don Juan that has caught my attention. Lord Byron seems to write endlessly about pleasure. Pleasure is....a mental state that humans or other animals aim to seek. Everybody strives to find pleasure, whether it be in woman like Juan, or in love like Julia. Byron states that "man is a strange animal" because of the endeavors we will go through just to find pleasure. In Don Juan, Juan has just laid with Julia, the wife of Don Alfonso. It is interesting how the two were seeking pleasure and acted immediately upon it rather than thinking about the consequences. Humans tend to do this often, thinking with their hearts rather than their minds.
A phrase that stuck out to me was "Pleasure's a sin and sometimes Sin's a pleasure". This is very interesting not only because it is true, but the fact that we as humans forget this often. When we are young we are taught what is right and wrong, but as we grow older we tend to realize that some of the stuff we thought was wrong feels good. I don't know if its the rush we get from doing something bad or the actual effect of the sin, but it feels good, it is pleasure. Byron is claiming that choosing pleasure is a sin because to achieve this pleasure you must sin. Juan and Julia found pleasure in each other but at the cost of Julia cheating on her husband, committing adultery. Sinning can sometimes be a pleasure, but no matter the pleasure it usually doesn't measure up to the risks associated with it. For example, Julia may have slept with Juan for a night, but she risked her lasting marriage with Alfonso. Pleasure is a basic need in life, but how we obtain it separates us from the animals.
Maybe our life's goal is to obtain pleasure while we are alive, because few mortals know what the end will hold. The speaker tells the reader that even he does not know what to expect in the afterlife so during his time alive he wishes to seek out pleasure. Does pleasure exist in the afterlife?
A phrase that stuck out to me was "Pleasure's a sin and sometimes Sin's a pleasure". This is very interesting not only because it is true, but the fact that we as humans forget this often. When we are young we are taught what is right and wrong, but as we grow older we tend to realize that some of the stuff we thought was wrong feels good. I don't know if its the rush we get from doing something bad or the actual effect of the sin, but it feels good, it is pleasure. Byron is claiming that choosing pleasure is a sin because to achieve this pleasure you must sin. Juan and Julia found pleasure in each other but at the cost of Julia cheating on her husband, committing adultery. Sinning can sometimes be a pleasure, but no matter the pleasure it usually doesn't measure up to the risks associated with it. For example, Julia may have slept with Juan for a night, but she risked her lasting marriage with Alfonso. Pleasure is a basic need in life, but how we obtain it separates us from the animals.
Maybe our life's goal is to obtain pleasure while we are alive, because few mortals know what the end will hold. The speaker tells the reader that even he does not know what to expect in the afterlife so during his time alive he wishes to seek out pleasure. Does pleasure exist in the afterlife?
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