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Date Posted:
Sep/25/2003 4:02 PM
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Personally, I think that both books The Metamorphosis and The Stranger are equally convincing portrait of isolation and alienation. In both books, the main characters, Meursault (Stranger) and Gregor (Metamorphosis) suffered from isolation and alienation from society and friends/family. In The Stranger, Meursault alienated himslef from society by being an indivual who chose not to show emotion and in the end, he indivuality screwed himself. The trial which Meursault was founded guility was society vs. indivuality and for that he dies. The trial on which Meursault was put on and founded guilt was planning the death of his mother. Somewhere in the book were "Preplanned" shows up refers to the death of his mother meaning putting her in a home and leaving her to died, not the Arab who he shot in self-denfense. With the people that were called for trial,they were mostly from his mom's funeral except for Marie and Raymond. With Marie the trial made her look like a cheap whore who sleeps with Meursault after his mom just died. And with Raymond, he said that Meursault was a nice guy but not why he was a nice guy and Raymond never visted him in jail so his friend was not really his friend. In Metamorphosis, Gregor was isolated and alienated from society and his family before and after his transformation. His family never loved him even when he was human. To them, he was the source of money they needed to pay off their debt so they don't have to work yet they are capable themselves. Although Grete was stuck in between but in the end she went with society. The only reason that The Metamorphosis seem more convincing is that Gregor's own family rejected him. Our current society that we are living in shows a loving family that loves us unconditionaly unless the deed was pretty extreme but the point is that there's love there. With Gregor, his parents didn't have that unconditional love at all. With Grete until her metamorphosis, she didn't think that blood was thicker than water meaning that she rather be with the in crowd than to accept his brother no matter what he looked like. After Gregor's transformation, all he cared about was being late for work. He didn't care what happened to him. To me it seem like that the point of Gregor's life was to work like a worker ant or bee to support the colony, and when his life purpose was gone, there is no point to live anymore. Both novel is literature, in Eagleton definition, literature is cultural, creative, and make the reader see what they didn't notice before. Both books suggested the absurdity of life / how if your life isn't what society shows it to be than it isn't worth living.
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