City Love Is Self Love

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In the short story “Love in LA” written in 1988 by Dagberto Gilb, we come across with a story that could happen to any of us. The story takes place a early morning at one of Hollywood’s freeways with the most traffic; we are introduced to the protagonist, Jake, who while driving is thinking and wishing he owned better things, and without noticing he crashes. Jake who is portrait as a irresponsible and selfish person thinks about fleeing the scene but he can’t because the traffic doesn’t let him. Both of the drivers pull to the side and we meet Mariana who is a sweet, responsible young girl; Jake seems interested on her and asks for her number but later on we learn that everything that jake tells Mariana is false and he’s lying. They both leave and we see that Jake feels pride and a sense of freedom for what he did. Many themes are present in the story but one stands out; The only form of love in the city is self love. In the story we come across many symbols, in fact Jake and Mariana are one of those symbols. Mariana is portrait as a beautiful,innocent young woman who represents what pure love really is, while Jake is the symbol of a selfish love who only cares about himself and no one else. In the middle of the story we discover that the author introduced us to two different characters, a woman and a man. When Jake crashes Mariana’s car, Jake is really attentive towards her, “you can give me your number....maybe we should go out to get breakfast” (Gild 2). Even though Mariana refuses the invitation she smiles and gives him her number. Then when Mariana asks for Jake’s license he lies and tells her that he left it at home and he provides her with false information. “ you have insurance? she asked....Oh yea, he lied”(Gilb 3). We see that Jake, who is careless and selfish takes advantage of mariana who is an innocent woman with good feeling. The author shows how

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