Adolescent love What is love? An intense affection and warm feeling for another person or a strong sexual desire for another person. In “Red Dress” and “An Ounce of Cure,” author Alice Munro explores the theme of teenage love and curiosity that causes every teenager to lose their innocence. This theme is effectively explored through flashbacks and foreshadowing. The loss of innocence helps adolescents learn from their mistakes and gain more knowledge, and this leads them to become adults. Compared to "Red Dress" and "An Ounce of Cure", the two teenage girls in both stories are very interested in love and want to fall in love. Both narrators were very interested and were very curious about them. In "Red Dress" the narrator and her friend Lonnie were always talking about boys. They were also doing all the questionnaires in the magazines to find out if they had personalities and if they would be popular. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Indeed, the narrators of both stories were accepted and appreciated by the kids, which surprised them. As can be seen in "Red Dress," "Mason Williams was one of the school's heroes; he played basketball and hockey and walked the halls with an air of royal surliness and barbaric contempt. Having to dance with a nobody like me was for him as offensive as having to memorize Shakespeare" (Munro 79). Likewise, in "An Ounce of Cure" the narrator was not accepted either. For example: Martin Collingwood had given me a surprised, grateful and rather sinisterly smug smile at the school assembly, and a few weeks later he took me out for the first time and kissed me on the dark side of the porch - also, I should say, on the mouth; I'm sure it was the first time anyone had kissed me effectively. (103)Proof of this, the two teenagers are very interested in love, which will then lead them to lose their innocence. Once the narrator of both stories was accepted and liked by the children, the turning point in the stories took place. This is when rejection comes and causes them to lose their innocence. In "Red Dress", when the narrator attended her first school dance, there was a popular boy named Mason Williams who asked her to dance. Throughout the dance, she was really surprised and happy that someone asked her to dance. However, during half the dance, Mason was exchanging dismayed glances with his friends, took his hands off her waist, causing her arms to drop, and walked away (79). Similarly, in "An Ounce of Cure", the narrator was also rejected by Martin because he had fallen in love with another girl. Although both narrators were rejected, in the end they were not surprised at all. It was because they had already achieved their wish of having a boyfriend. On the other hand, rejection caused the narrator of "An Ounce of Cure" to lose her innocence. This was where Alice Munro used foreshadowing to explore the theme. My parents didn't drink. They weren't avid about it, and in fact I remember when I signed the pledge in seventh grade, with the rest of that class superbly, if impermanently indoctrinated, the same nature that made my mother look at me, on every occasion that traditionally calls for feelings of pride and maternal accomplishment with an expression of dark, fascinated desperation, as if she couldn't expect, not ask, for her to go with me as she did with the other girls. (103) This theme is effectively explored through foreshadowing, capture....