The Bad Girl: Part 2

¡Aye Ricardito! My heartbreaks for this poor deluded idiot. Which I suppose, in retrospect, is a sign of very good literature simply for the fact that the characters could evoke such strong emotion from me which is no small feat. All of my feelings aside the bad girl part two did not fail to deliver, while reading through the first half of the book there was a small creeping fear in the back of my mind that the whole story was going to be this cat and mouse game of deception until it reached some sort of dramatic and ultimately fulfilling end. Oh how wrong I was! The maturation of the relationship between Ricardo and the bad girl surprised me, at first they share this infantile lover beloved dynamic where Ricardo makes his affections too known and the bad girl shuts him down at any hint of commitment unless he can provide her some useful service, which in that case she'll humor him. The bad girl does an amazing job of leaving him wanting for more, even for years at a time she leaves an image of her perfection with him so powerful that no one else can compare. As the saying goes time heals all wounds but Ricardo seemingly cannot quit this dangerous girl, even worse are the personal extremes that he is willing to go through just to please her. He puts himself in financial danger, emotional turmoil, physical danger, and in a place that is detrimental to his career all for a woman who refuses to even pretend like she loves him. If this were based on a true story I would use it as a case study for the love as a mental imbalance theory, Ricardo has more then enough symptoms to be diagnosed with a handful of well fitting psychiatric disorders. He attempts to woe the same girl over and over again in the exact same way and receives the same result every time, but does this make him crazy? No, according to society he is just a man in love. However at the turning point of their relationship we notice that the image of Ricardos desire has begun to crack and for the first time he finds her unattractive, what does this symbolize? and why isn't his obsession with the bad girl done after he finally sees her for what she is? I believe that in a sick way this is love blooming, yes the whole time he claims to love her over and over again but if the image of love that you desire is no longer perfect then you no longer have the image to desire. Just like Narcissus touching his reflection in the pool of water, the image was disturbed, and realized for what it truly was but in Ricardos case he didn't die from lack of desire in fact I believe that it was the banishment of that very image of his own creation that gave birth to a form of love for the bad girl. Yes, there are supposedly many forms of love and none of them should be like this but this was not meant to be a fairytale, unrequited love does exist and it can prove to be a very powerful force. Although Ricardo pretends to take care of the bad girl out of obligation, the extremes of care that he goes through for her betray him, he never gets over her and he never will. He's like a duckling that had the ill fate of imprinting itself on the wrong parent, he is forever vulnerable even when it comes to her even when the dichotomy of there love finally shifts into his favor he is powerless to her. The shift in Ricardo becoming the hunted and the bad girl being the hunter highlighted the Celestina-esque plot twist where although it is known that he loves her, she too will secretly love him. This play on human desire turns the enigma of the bad girl into something so much more, we come to realize that even this kind of love of the image and desire is a reciprocal relationship in which the object wishes to be worshiped as much as the worshiper wishes to desire the object.