Loveday Writing

‘Hate is just a failure of the imagination.’ (Graham Greene)**

I have always felt that hatred is an emotion that requires effort. When you dislike something or someone, it’s like a reflex–it’s instantaneous and you can’t help it. Hatred to me requires effort and action, it’s an emotion that is consciously felt. Therefore my interpretation of this quote is that hate is a failure of the imagination due to the fact that feeling hatred for something or someone closes a person’s mind to the possibilities of where liking something or someone could lead. For example, if someone ordered a dish at a restaurant and ended up hating it, because they hated the meal, they would never go back to the restaurant. Because they hated the meal, they wrote off the possibilities of finding another meal at said restaurant that they would like or possibly love. Another example would be if a woman hated a man because the man said something to insult her, she would be closing her mind to the possibility of a reconciliation, which could lead to a friendship with the man.

 

**Reference: Marsden, J 1998, Everything I Know About Writing, Pan Macmillan, Australia.