Comparing John Mark Green And The Chaser

In John Colliers ironic short story “The Chaser,” the main character buys a love potion to make the person he loves fall in love with him. The seller of the potion warns the main character that this isn’t a real love and he will regret it. In the poem “Masquerade” John Mark Green, the speaker explains that we, as humans, become obsessed with the idea of hiding behind masks and the mask don’t reveal our true identities which make it easier for us to fall in “love.” Both the poem and the short story introduce the hidden message that love is not the same thing as obsession. “The Chaser” begins as the main character, Alan Austen, seeks out a peculiar old man that sells love potions. The old man warns Alan that previous people who had bought the love potion regretted buying the potions and eventually had to buy the life cleaner, which was poison. Alan doesn’t care because he wants a woman named Diana to love him and wants her to become infatuated with him. This potion provides that the love that Diana will have for Alan is in fact not love but an obsession conjured up by this love potion. Then Alan will become fed up with Diana infatuation and will poison her. This proves that the love that Diana feels for Alan is not love but actually an obsession. …show more content…
While many people believe that love can be bought, others say that it can’t. The old man hints at the idea of if a man had money, then he wouldn’t need to buy the love potion because he could just buy the love of the woman with physical money. However, Alan is a young man that it looking for love with a few dollars in his pocket so he would obviously by the love potion. This obsession with not only love that Alan wants but money that Diana wants is what draws Alan to the potion and what causes him to buy the