Quote 3

Passerby:   “It’s never something you do. That’s how people are. Love fades.”

A passerby makes this response to Alvy’s question, “Somewhere, she cooled off to me. Is it something that I did?” The pedestrian’s answer encourages Alvy to face reality and chalk up the relationship’s end as natural and inevitable. The comment suggests that we, as human beings, are helpless to control what happens to us. Alvy has nothing to do with the cooling of Annie’s feelings for him: she has just moved on to a different stage in her life that doesn’t include him. People change. Love fades. This idea doesn’t make things any easier for Alvy, who seems to want to pinpoint the exact moment and situation in which Annie’s feelings tempered. In a sense, it makes things worse, because he is left at a loss, with no one and nothing to blame for his unhappiness. The passerby’s remark foreshadows Alvy’s final monologue in the film, which sums up his feelings about relationships.