Essay – ”The Rental Heart”
Love. Love can be good and love can be bad, although love is the most important thing in the world. Love is something we can’t be without, because where there is love – there is life. You see love in many different connections. Everyone has their own point of view on love. No one really knows the actual meaning of love – which makes love a mystery that many creative souls are trying to solve. The story “The Rental Heart” written by Kirsty Logan in 2010 deals with the feelings of loving another person. During this essay, the science fiction and the symbolism in “The Rental Heart,” will be analyzed.
Kirsty Logan, who is a writer of fiction and journalism, also wrote the short story “The Rental Heart.” The story is written from Kirsty Logan’s own experiences with love, as she many years ago dated different people. The first time she got hurt, she was shattered and felt like nothing. The many negative thoughts in her head gave her the idea of pretending as if she had a Rental Heart, as she says in one of her blog posts on her website, “I pretended that I had a rental heart. I pretended that I could use it to be with someone and then return it afterwards, that it would be like nothing ever happened. I made sure that no-one I went out with left a scratch on me.” Later on, she met a girl, Susie, who became her inspiration for her story, “The Rental Heart”, as she proved to her that true love exists.
In the short story, we do not know the gender of the protagonist, but still we are aware of the fact that the main character is bisexual, as he/she goes from dating a boy to a girl many times. Kirsty Logan used her idea of a Rental Heart as the focus in the story. The character’s second love talks about renting a heart, in the purpose of never getting your heart broken. From then on, the protagonist always rents a heart when he/she has feelings