Love has many definitions and can be interpreted in many different ways. William Maxwell demonstrates this in his short story “Love”. Maxwell opens his story with a positive view of “Love” by saying: “Miss Vera Brown, wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter in the perfectly oval Palmer method. Our fifth grade teacher. The name might as well have been carved in stone” (1). At the end of the story, the students' "love" for their teachers no longer has a positive meaning, due to a turn of events that leads to a tragic ending. It could be argued that throughout the story Maxwell uses short descriptive sentences with added details that foreshadow the tragic ending. “Love” by William Maxwell is a short story that tells the story of a young elementary school age boy and his classmates in love. with their fifth grade teacher, Miss Vera Brown, but the love for their teacher isn't exactly the same love for her students. The students liked their teacher and saw her as one of the best fifth grade teachers. Her fifth grade class was very polite to her and she never misbehaved. They gave Miss Vera Brown lots of gifts, such as an apple on her desk before class started, flowers and a movie for her birthday. They liked Miss Vera Brown so much that they wanted to keep her as a teacher during their middle and high school years. Until one day she returned for the rest of fifth grade, making the students worry that something had happened to her. During their first year of middle school, two students, Benny and the Narrator, went to visit Miss Vera Brown where she was staying. When they arrived home, they saw Miss Vera Brown lying on her bed sick and realized ... middle of paper ... sad state of mind. Maxwell shapes his story around the death of Miss Vera Brown and suggests that her death will occur, so as to tie back to his main theme. Overall, "Love" is about death and the students' love for their teacher, even if it isn't. what it is intended to be. Maxwell demonstrates this through his tone, point of view, word choice, and sentence structure, which coordinates with the overall theme of death. Use sentence structure to show the perspective of a fifth grade student. Additionally, he also uses short descriptive sentences to show how a fifth grade student would tell a story. Maxwell also uses a specific choice of words that adds detail to his short sentences, in order to foreshadow the death of Miss Vera Brown. Each of these formal characteristics helps shape his essay around the theme of death, which requires close attention to understand