For Different Reasons

At one point in the story, both David and Hella want to be married to each other, but for different reasons. In the beginning of the book, David tells the reader that "nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. I suppose this was why I asked her to marry me: to give myself something to be moored to" (5). Hella had a bit different thought process when deciding to marry David though. During a conversation between the two, she tells David, "I began to realize it in Spain-that I wasn't free, that I couldn't be free until I was attached-no, committed-to someone" (126). Interesting how David and Hella want the same thing, marriage, to obtain opposite results, one doesn't want the unbearable freedom while the other wants to be freed.