Alienation By Kristen Dombek 's Piece, She Details Various Accounts Of Social Alienation

The term alienation refers to the isolation of one’s self from a belonging society. When a person is alienated they no longer feel as if they belong or have the same views as the group or society they live in. How does one become alienated from something that they once belonged to? This is a question many have discussed throughout history. In Voltaire’s book Candide, Marx’s book The Communist Manifesto, Hoffer’s The True Believer, and Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized, all these authors address man’s alienation in modern society and come up with solutions for man’s alienation within each book.

An author’s personal experience gives authenticity to their text. Peter Skrzynecki, an Australian poet of Polish origin emigrated to Australia shortly before the end of World War II. His assimilation into his newfound homeland is portrayed in his emotive poetry, where he explores his disconnection and alienation. The way in which Skrzynecki writes about his personal experiences gives an authentic insight into the perspective of a migrant, allowing the audience to better understand the challenging emotions evoked by the migrant experience. These emotions are clearly seen in Skrzynecki’s poem St Patrick’s College, where he delves back through his experiences at school and highlights the disconnection and alienation he felt being a migrant. This disconnection is further expressed in Feliks Skrzynecki, where Skrzynecki alludes to his detachment from even his father. These feelings of disconnection and alienation shown by Skrzynecki in his poems, allows the audience to understand the effects of growing up as a migrant.

The battle between society and man, the social creature, would be a definition of social alienation. As a result of the wounds casted upon a man from society, that man begins to alienate himself and retreat. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in “Notes from Underground,” shows us the Underground Man who, after expecting the world to work like it does in literature, finds himself being isolated for the last twenty years of his life. Ralph Ellison, in “Invisible Man,” shows us an Invisible Man who, in the beginning has social hopes and aspirations, eventually becomes completely alienated on. While Dostoyevsky and Ellison show us somebody alienated from society in different eras and environment, they differ on why one becomes alienated.

Alienation can be defined as a state of being cut off or separate from a person or group of people. There are many factors that cause people to become alienated: race, political views, social status, etc. The texts “The Great Gatsby”, “The Catcher in the Rye”, and the play “Death of a Salesman” all portray characters who are cut off from the rest society. Despite the character's best effort to fit in, they ultimately fail. The authors argue that one's ideology can cause them to be alienated.

One of the greatest economic theorist Karl Marx whose ideas were once used in the Soviet Union and other countries that failed to success makes human beings think of the type of economy that they are living in. Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany. He witnessed the rise of the industrial revolution and the beginning of capitalism. Marx was the strongest capitalist critic who analyzed the ills of the capitalism. Marx wrote lots of books and they were mostly about the capitalism. And Capitalism is one type of economy. The United States is a capitalist country. One of his writings that this paper will focus on is “Alienated Labor” and it talks about different types of Alienation that the workers of capitalism experienced. Alienation

In Just Like Us the sociological concept of alienation is highlighted during a conversation between Helen Thorpe and

Societal standards are set in place so one can stay inside the box. But what happens when the boundaries begin to be pushed open and torn down? It has been discovered through many classic novels and historical events that alienation can occur as a result of these broken barriers. By definition, alienate means “to cause (someone) to stop being friendly, helpful, etc., towards you” (Merriam-Webster). This is a major factor in Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston is able to grasp the moral values and societal standards of gender and race in an African American society in the early 1900’s perfectly. She does this through her subjective alienation and psychological progression of the main character, and protagonist, Janie.

He describes the white flight from the inner cities to the suburbs, leaving neighborhoods with high concentrations of poor minorities behind. The Missing Class examines a similar theme of gentrification of neighborhoods, illuminated by the example of the Floyd family in the Clinton Hill neighborhood in north central Brooklyn. “Once in decline, the neighborhood is now on the upswing . . . various factories have shut their doors, the affordable housing has disappeared, and upscale apartments have sprouted.” (Newman & Chen, pg. 12). The Floyds lost their one financial asset, their home, when they were swindled by a contractor who promised to fix up the house, and allow them to pay their loan off over time. The Floyds lament about the influx of affluent white Yuppies in their neighborhood, a place where they know everyone and have lived for the past twenty years, wondering what it will mean for the neighborhood’s identity, wondering if it will still be a black neighborhood. According to another neighbor, despite the rising prices, most black residents won’t sell their homes. “Their family roots are in the South, where property carries with it both tradition and responsibility” (pg. 15). Clearly, the loss of a house or a neighborhood could deeply affect a person’s sense of self and a sense of pride, leaving someone grasping for their once stable identity.

While traveling to New York City, Victoria and her sister Tennessee met Cornelius Vanderbilt. He was appreciative of Victoria, so he helped them start the first women-run stock brokerage company. Along with her sister Tennessee, Victoria created a publication called Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. With the publication, the sisters were able to give their opinions on women’s suffrage, social reforms and other rights that they thought women deserve. She spoke out publically, and even appointed the issues to congress. Although she tried to raise more awareness by running for president, some of her supporters alienated because of her remarks about sexuality and social

In the world today there are more teens that are isolated by alienation than in any other time period. People are judged and later on isolated by characteristics of themselves that they can not change. When people get isolated they began to distance themselves from others and the alienation becomes worse. In the short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses isolation to show that in society people are alienated because of gender, race, and class.

Alienation influences the lives of many emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. Often isolation causes negative results, although in some cases it is beneficial for the person to develop into who they are. Through Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints and Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, alienation aids characters with their coming of age journey through self- alienation, social alienation and impactful alienation.

Aldous Huxley creates a futuristic utopian society in his novel, “Brave New World”. Individuals have little to no freedoms, and are conditioned not question their superiors from birth to adulthood. Jobs are predetermined before birth as is being taught to belong to one another. John the Savage, however, provides an insight on this society told from an outsider perspective. Being born from a nonnative mother is unfortunate, as the civilization he belongs to heavily punishes those nonnatives, such as not being able to hunt as a group. John was born and grows up as a nobody with no one to talk to besides his mother, Linda. Shoved into the New World, John continues to realize he struggles to fit in the general population and experiences alienation

Marx’s theory of alienation is concerned primarily with social interaction and production; he believes that we are able to overcome our alienation through human emancipation.

This semester we have studied five works that all communicate different themes and views of existentialism through each protagonist's point of view. From reading, watching, and analyzing each piece of work, we have come to know existentialists as having a very interesting outlook on life. Almost all the existentialists in the five works we studied believe in freedom of choice. That humans define their own meaning in life and try their best to make rational decisions in spite of existing in what they consider an “unreasonable universe”. The protagonists in each short story and movie we have watched, have similar qualities between each other and quite a few differences. The two pieces of work that will be focused on are, ‘The Wall’ by Jean-Paul Sartre and ‘The Guest’ by Albert Camus.

Topic: One of the essential elements to Marx’s alienation concept is that of people or workers being alienated from each other under capitalism, it is still relevant in explaining the problems of the modern world.