Paper Topic:

“Alienation”

The term alienation ' in respect of people and societies is generally used to describe both estrangement from traditional communities by single people and estrangement of people from each other in contemporary society . Our way of life is based in individualism and individual effort , as well as ideology of individual success so it leaves little room for interaction between people and collectivism . Recently the became a concern of many and artists worldwide , so it is possible to speak of truly global phenomena . This aims to analyze two pieces of writing discussing the of

alienation , namely A very Old Man with Enormous Wings ' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and My Singular Irene ' by Jose Alcantara Almanzar . The shall discuss the approach of both to the of alienation and how they demonstrated it in their writings

The plot of A very Old Man with Enormous Wings ' is fantastic , but such surrealistic approach is usual for Marques . One day Pelayo and Elisenda - a married couple living in a village , find a strange man with wing in their courtyard . After some mess and advising with neighbors they decide , that the man is an angel . In fact he is , and he tells , that he has come after their sick child . The spouses are not enthusiastic about it and lock the angel in a chicken coop . Meanwhile local people learn about an angel and a crowd of curious visitors came to the house every day . Elisenda started making business from it and take money for opportunity to see the angel . But soon the people have lost their interest to the angel and find another amusement - a women , who has been turned into a tarantula and eagerly tells her story . And the disappointed angel flies away to the horizon

Alienation is perhaps not the basic theme of the story , but it can be traced in it . The first sign of alienation are translation difficulties . The angel speaks some strange language , which the people do not understand . Father Gonzaga , a local priest , is absolutely convinced that an angel is an official messenger of God , so he has to speak Latin - an official language of Roman Catholic Church . Each character interprets the angel 's language differently , but no one even tries to learn the language of the angel itself and understand what the angel really says . So , says Marques , people are estranged from God : they do not know the language He speaks and they do not even want to try to learn this language . Each of them is locked inside his own understanding just like the people near the Tower of Babel . Firstly they are unable to understand God , and than they will be unable to understand each other

The second factor is aggression . Even when people understand that it is really an angel before them , they do not seem to be surprised , they are only curious . A woman from the neighborhood suggests to beat the angel to death because she is afraid of...

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