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 topic became a concern of many writers and artists worldwide, so it is possible to speak of truly global phenomena. This paper aims to analyze two pieces of writing discussing the topic of alienation, namely “A very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and “My Singular Irene” by Jose Alcantara Almanzar. The paper shall discuss the approach of both writers to the topic 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 his supernatural powers. The angel is locked in the chicken coop and the wings of the angel are quitted to wings of chicken for those people.
The third factor of alienation in the story is people’s desire to be entertained and feel well at all costs. There I no difference for them between angel and a monster-like woman. There is no difference for Elisenda how to make money, even if she needs to imprison an angel an arrange a show of her prisoner. And the last thing which she cares of is her child. The angel could save child’s life or take him to better life, but Elisenda does not even think of it. Profit is her only god. So even a community which seems to be traditional appears to be deeply affected with alienation.
In “My Singular Irene” Jose Alcantara Almanzar investigates personal and intimate aspects of alienation rather than social ones. This is a story of relations between two people: Peter and Clarisa and how the distance broke their relationship…in case there was one. Same as in the story by Marques there are several levels of alienation in this story.
The first one comes to be when Peter has to stay in India and does everything to support Clarisa’s interest to him and keep in touch. He expects that Clarisa would be excited with his noble behavior, but he only finds out that she is simply bored with his long letters and that Clarissa is not so enthusiastic about his return from India. Peter is dreaming of Clarissa, but Clarissa does not even consider Peter to be a normal human being, for her he is nothing but a shape of her mind.
It is not true, that Clarissa is at all not interested in Peter, but she constantly finds reasons to ruin her interest and convince herself, that she has nothing to deal with Peter. When she thinks of how she both adored and felt uncomfortable around Hugh Whitbread, she agrees that others also feel the same such as Richard, her husband, who could not stand Hugh. However, as she remembers that Peter also held the same sentiments, she immediately downplays that fact by dismissively thinking that Peter could be like that. Besides learning that he had married a flimsy Indian woman angered her greatly but she started to invent logical reasons why they could not be married.
Reasoning is Clarissa’s main tool to become estranged from Peter. She attempts to calm down a stream of thoughts and feeling rushing through her head and use cold logics to analyze her emotion. She simply oppresses her feelings in favor of her comfort. Indeed it is not easy for her. When Peter bursts out in tears, Clarissa comforted him, kissing him, and stroking his hands before she retained control and sat back. When Peter did come back she felt really good with him and even started dreaming of marriage and that Peter would take her with him. On the other hand her dreams are little more than dreams, because she does not take any active effort to make those dreams come true. She rashes to the door after Peter, but in the last moment she changes her mind and only reminds him of a party.
In fact, it seems, that Clarissa does not really love any man, she is too cold and logical for that. In many ways the society is a reason: she has been married to Richard when she was young and nobody was interested whether she loves Richard. Although they have a daughter Clarissa wonders whether she had failed her husband. So she merely acts in the way society acted to her. At the end of the story the Peter and Clarissa do meet at the party and the final remains opened. There is a chance that the characters managed to overcome their alienation, but this chance is vague.
