Being from Maine means that if you don't have a car
you don't have a social life. Even worse, if you are a child with parents who
think that driving is too expensive, you are doomed to be a loner. But after
reading Celestina, maybe that's not such a bad thing. After all, if you don't
have a car and are stuck at home there is very little trouble you can get into.
This heightened the longevity of my life by like 200%. Without a car I am able
to avoid not only meeting prostitutes (I have yet to see any in Maine, such a
bummer), witches, and most of all boys. Heaven forbid I fall into the equation
of 1 witch+prostitutes+1 boy+ 1 senseless girl in puppy love=definite death.
It's surprising any of us have lived this long.
It says that Calisto realizes Celestina's secret
when he hears that his servants killed her and are being beheaded. This
realization is that Melibea would have loved him even if he hadn't sent
Celestina to bewitch her on his behalf. Now what fun is that? This means that
Calisto was a lot easier to obtain than he had thought. Therefore, she would
have loved him even if she had never met Celestina. This is when Melibea falls
out of love with Calisto. If she had been an impossible catch she would have
held her attractiveness and beauty in the mirror he had previously seen. Now
she is just another girl, at least she is a girl who is willing to have sex with
him. He is suddenly faced with the moment when the passion has died out.
It's such a pity that we can't hold onto the passion
that we encounter when we first meet a person. We expect it too last forever
and long for the quivering feeling in your spine to tell you how much you love
this person. Yet, it fades, after a year or so you will inevitably never feel
that quivering feeling again. For Calisto and Melibea this feeling fades pretty
much as soon as they are done having sex the first time. Melibea's feelings for
Calisto fade to wanting her only because of the sex she provides him. This
revealed when Sosia visits Areusa and tells her about the meetings between
Calisto and Melibea. He after explaining their secret, he says, "Even less
would he go every night, for that endeavor will not tolerate daily
visitation" (de Rojas, 217). He only goes when he is able to have sex and
would rather stay home than to see her with her clothes on.
Another time you are able to see that Melibea is
done with Calisto is in his death scene. Melibea hears a ruckus on the street
and would rather go fight and leave Calisto, after he had just had sex with
her, than to stay and be with his lover. This leads to his hasty climb away
from her in the dark leading to his slip and fall off of the ladder. With
Calisto dead we are now able to see why it is so tragic that girls get so much
of their self-worth from external sources. With her major source of sexual love
gone, her feelings about herself plummet into a belief that life cannot go on.
Upon this reasoning that, the death of an inattentive lover + a higher tower =
the only way she can feel better, she kills herself.
These continual deaths that occur one after
the other in Celestina is a lesson de Rojas wishes to give us. He is telling us
to reign in our passions and greed because they will only lead to our demise.
All of the characters in Celestina want something and to almost all of them
this is the death of them. Celestina wanted money which leads to her death by
Sempronio and Parmeno who killed her over the gold chain she refuses to share.
Sempronio and Parmeno, who also wanted money, get beheaded for killing
Celestina over the gold chain. Calisto and Melibea wanted passion and both got
killed when they found that it was so fleeting. Melibea got killed because he
was in such a rush to get away from her and Calisto killed herself because she
couldn't deal with the hole it left when it was diminished.
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