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This essay will look at some characters from the Harry Potter novels, their attitude to deaht and their ability to love. The focus is to look at how their different stances to death and love make them good or evil. Most attention will be given to some key characters: Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter, Severus Snape, and Albus Dumbledore. Their attitudes to death is first to be dealt with, followed by an investigation of their ability to love. After that, a conclusion by analysing more briefly some minor characters who are part of Voldemort’s Death Eaters. The analysis is mainly restricted to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but there are a few examples from some of the other books in the Harry Potter series as well.

This thesis is a response to the sociobiological paradigm which sees all aspects of life as fundamentally 'selfish'. This view is built upon two concepts, firstly, that the evolutionary process of natural selection leads to a world characterised by 'selfish' genes and 'selfish' individual organisms. Secondly, that all aspects of human nature, including benevolence, are defined by natural selection and are consequently selfish in motivation also. In Chapter 2, the first of these ideas is shown as inappropriate, not least, because selection favours genes that 'cooperate' and individuals that 'sacrificially' expend themselves in producing offspring. In Chapter 3, the second concept is discounted as only some aspects of human behaviour and culture can be explained in terms of natural selection. These points are central to the discussions on 'altruism' in Chapters 4-6. While sociobiologists have rightly noted that kin and reciprocal forms of 'altruism' occur in nature and in human society, their rendering of them in terms of genetic and individual 'selfishness' is again entirely misleading. The arguments of some sociobiologists for group selected forms of 'altruism' in nature and human culture are shown as unconvincing. Further, the sociobiological contention that human benevolence is constrained to the aiding of kin, reciprocal partners and group members is also countered. Humans exhibit the capacity to care for those outside of these sociobiological categories. Moreover, rather than being primarily selfish in motivation, humans are both more altruistic and more egoistic than the sociobiological view can accommodate. Chapter 7 considers the sociobiological interpretation of the New Testament (NT) teachings on love as selfishly concerned only with the care of kin, reciprocators and group members. This view is largely acceded to by the theologian, Stephen Pope, while another, Patrfcia Williams, has argued that the NT directly strives to counter such innate forms of behaviour. Chapters 8-10 investigate some of the NT teachings on love and argue for a more profound and complex altruism than any of these views. Chapter 8 contends that NT love is a deeply humble and sacrificial altruism where the needs of the other are placed before those of the self; one that is patterned after the example of Christ. It is a radical altruism, which as Chapter 9 argues, encompasses kin but also goes beyond this category in the requirement to love the new family of believers. This love of the group, the church, is itself transcended in a love for all others. Chapter 10 argues that this NT altruism is not bound by reciprocity for it prioritises the care of the weak, those who cannot reciprocate; and extends love to enemies, those who will not reciprocate. The view that such a love is ultimately reciprocal on the grounds of its heavenly reward is countered, as the NT reward of love is the promise that the believer's capacity for self-giving love will be perfected.

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This study explores the concept of love in some of Browning`s poems during the Victorian era in which he tried to discuss love from his own perspective. Thus the study explains the concept of love which has been a main theme in some of Browning`s poems.  My study will illustrate using the feminist theory. This theory was founded in 1792 when the struggle for women’s equality was much in demand. Thus, I will try to explain Browning`s poems by application of this theory. Browning sees love as a basic need for the human soul; therefore, the study reveals how Browning saw love from his religious perspective through which he tried to tell his readers that love is a gift of God and that women are allowed to love and be loved despite the concept of the Victorian age that treated women as inferiors in comparison to men.

This thesis examines the idea of modern love as expressed in the four novels of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.