Book 4 Reflection

My heart is broken for Dido. That was so painful to read, but I couldn't put it down. The best book so far.

Was Virgil married? He describes love vividly. I'm not really sure where to start with love, so I'll just take it from the top. First, I think it is interesting how seriously Dido takes her love for Aeneas in the beginning. She is very hesitant to marry him for fear of disrespecting her past husband. This is interesting to me because nowadays, you don't see this too much. People are eager for companionship and although they may not forget a lost spouse, sometimes they are quick to replace them. Next, I would like to relate Dido's kind of love with Apollo's kind of love in The Metamorphoses. They are both very similar to infatuation and obsession. "Each word [Aeneas speaks] is fixed in [Dido's] heart, each facial expression" (4). I mean, I may not know what love is, but that seems like an extreme love-potion kind of love. Dido's love is described as obsession on page 79, and it is given crazy-like qualities, such as hearing and seeing him when he is not there. This could be because it was a love created by Cupid and Venus and not one that grew naturally from her heart. This could also be the reason it was powerful enough to cause her to kill herself. Also, Virgil continuously describes Dido with her sanity fading, which could either mean that she is continuously falling deeper and deeper in love with Aeneas, or it could foreshadow her completely losing her mind and committing suicide. Her death is actually foreshadowed on page 79 during the simile about the deer with the arrow "barbed deep in her haunch...that will kill her". After Aeneas and Dido are married, they go through what present-day society would call a "honeymoon stage". At first, I questioned whether or not Aeneas actually loved Dido at all, but I realized, his love for her at one point totally steered him off the course of his fate, so he must have felt something for her. After the gods step in to bring Aeneas back to his reality, the dynamic of their love totally changes. Fate seems to be presented as stronger than love at this point because it pulls completely away from Dido. Naturally, she finds out his plan and the reader sees how crazy a woman with a "mind now out of control" and in love/hate can be (300). Dido is left heartbroken for the second time in her life. Now I've never been heartbroken, but I've heard heartbreak is the worst pain a human can ever go through, and to go through that twice could completely shatter a person. Dido is completely desperate now, and when all of her attempts to keep Aeneas (even for a short time) fail, her burning love turns to absolute loathing. Love is a cruel thing and if this chapter doesn't prove that it can destroy a person, I don't know what will.
Another aspect of love that comes up in this book is sisterly love. The reader can see, Anna just wants Dido to be happy as she encourages her to pursue her love for Aeneas, but in the last couple pages of the book, the true bond of sisters is really portrayed. As she watches Dido die, Anna says "you've killed me and yourself," indicating that their connection ran so deep that a part of Anna was destroyed in losing her sister. Dido is also described as Anna's "soulmate" to show that sisterly love runs deeper than blood. To this, I can relate. I love my sisters more than anything in the world and if I ever lost one of them, I know there would be a gaping hole in my heart that no one could ever fix. Sisters are irreplaceable, and this was hard for me to realize when I was younger, but it is becoming increasingly clearer to me as I get older.

(sorry that was a lot to write about love)

Divine intervention indirectly kills Dido. Venus and Juno's intervention, especially Juno, who joins them by marriage, making the betrayal even deeper, only hurt her more when it was time for her to go. Jupiter 's instructions to Mercury to pass on to Aeneas, ruin Aeneas's love for Dido; however, without them, Aeneas might have never moved on to found the city of Rome. The gods are needed here to move the plot forward, especially to make sure that Aeneas does not remain in Carthage indefinitely. A question I have about divine intervention in this book is, why doesn't Venus feel the need to help Dido get over her heartbreak? The goddess of love feels nothing while her daughter-in-law suffers heartbreak, partially because of her. The goddess that does feel for Dido is Juno, and she does send down Iris to help her soul escape her body. Another goddess I would like to examine in this book is Rumour. She is an interesting one because she gives a thing an actual divine form. But I'm not sure of the actual relevance of that.

Fate is a funny thing in Book 4. It overpowers love in Aeneas, which is interesting because love is so strong itself that it is said to overcome death. Furthermore, "Dido [is] dying a death that was never deserved not predestined," so what does that mean? Does Dido herself overcome fate while Aeneas succumbs to it? In that case, the emotional strength of a woman and the power of a woman's love takes on a whole new meaning. But it also means (if indeed Dido did overcome fate) that humans have the power to do that if our will is strong enough (and maybe with a little help from the gods). I could be reading that the wrong way though, and letting my imagination get away from me. As a side note, I think it's extremely ironic that in the beginning of the chapter Dido is commenting on "what a beating" destiny gave Aeneas when her life quickly turns to an emotional hell about 10 pages later.

Morals in this book were not quite as obvious to me, possibly because I was focusing on love. One could argue that Aeneas leaving is a moral issue, but it's a lot of issues combining. Love, morals, fate, and divine intervention all play contradictory roles in his departure, making it such a complex issue. Morally it is wrong for him to leave because he's married to Dido, and makes a promise to her through their marriage, but, morals are disregarded when it comes to a higher calling/power. Dido marrying Aeneas in the first place could be looked at as a moral issue as well. If she is expected to show a certain amount of respect to her former husband, then her marriage to Aeneas is wrong and very selfish of her. Moreover, Dido's suicide is morally wrong, especially because suicide is a selfish escape when she has a city to rule. She is leaving Carthage in a time where they will need a ruler and, although it's very understandable why Dido kills herself, it is wrong for her to not shoulder the pain and think about others. The last moral issue I found in this book is Juno's deal with Venus. Juno believes that Aeneas will not leave and establish Rome if he marries Dido, therefore this protects her city from its future destruction by Rome. Juno does not reveal her true intentions to Venus, but Venus and the reader can see right through Juno's deception and understand that, in whatever way possible, she wants to save Carthage from its fate.

Once again Virgil has filled my mind with only more questions and things to think about, I'm finding it hard to keep them all in mind.