Origin of The Title
The story is set in Reno, Nevada, around which spreads an expanse of desert that initially strikes fear into Evelyn upon her arrival and has been a comfort to Ann during her existence there. It is used to describe Evelyn's lack of knowledge of what real love is, when she tells Ann that she lives, "in the desert of the heart." After she falls in love with Ann, the desert surrounding Reno ceases to terrify her. Simultaneously, the desert also ceases to comfort Ann as a place to run to be alone.
Along with the climate desert as a symbol, the setting of the casino in which Ann works and Evelyn visits is also considered a desert of morality. Ann is witness to what the addiction of gambling does to people of all walks of life, including the employees. Being fired from the casino frees Ann from her refusals to care about what happens to the gambling addicts, dealers, other change aprons, and the casino management, and allows her to commit to a more refined life with Evelyn.
The title is taken from a poem by W.H. Auden, his elegy for Yeats. "In the desert of the heart, Let the healing fountain start." Evelyn is a professor of English literature, and she quotes from some of Yeats' poems.
Read more about this topic: Desert Of The Heart
Famous quotes containing the words origin of the, origin of, origin and/or title:
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose.”
—Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes, 1:4-5.
Ernest Hemingway took the title The Sun Also Rises (1926)