Med eros som ledstjärna : En analys av kärlek och livsåskådningsförhandling i Karin Boyes roman Kris.

The aim of this essay is to explore what understandings of love are expressed in Karin Boye’s 1934 novel Crisis and how these understandings relate to the protagonist’s reevaluation of her world and life views. The essay makes use of a method of close-reading and interpretation of the novel through four analysis questions related to the essay’s aim. By focusing on three Greek definitions of love (eros, agape and philia) and the concept ‘livsåskådning’, which explains the functional aspects of world and life views, the study analyses how godly and personal love influences the protagonist’s religious beliefs. At first, the protagonist’s main goal is to submit to the Christian God and consequently she understands love as complying to the Bible’s commandments. When experiencing the personal love for a fellow female student she finds herself no longer willing to suppress her own self and her own will. Thus, the society’s Christian morals are challenged by a modern, individual-focused perspective. This leads to a personal crisis in which the protagonist’s life and world views are re-evaluated. By desiring the fellow student, the personal eros urges the protagonist to discover the world and life through her own experience rather than trusting the flawed written word. God and his promised impartial love, agape, are discovered as exclusively focused on obedience and punishment, which leads the protagonist to declaring God’s fall. However, the analysis of the novel shows that a union of eros and a true impartial agape is possible as eros shows the way of loving the world and its creations. This result demonstrates that the novel’s understanding of love differs from most known Christians theologians, who either describe eros as formed through or as incompatible with agape. Therefore, the essay contributes with a different perspective on how godly and personal love can affect life and world views.