In the Book The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder portrays love to be both the cause of misery in life and the cause of meaning in life. The book begins in Peru with the collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey. The catastrophe results in five people plunging to their deaths. A Franciscan monk named Brother Juniper witnesses the event and wonders, “why did this happen to those five?” In an attempt …showed first 75 words of 1194 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1194 total…the lives of those they left behind. Even Brother Juniper was tortured by love. He loved his book and in turn was named a heretic and burned, along with his book, at the stake. “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only mean.”pg123 Literature Cited 1. Wilder, Thornton, The Bridge of San Luis Rey HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY, 1955