Alienation In The Yellow Wallpaper And Araby By James Joyce

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Alienation is a common theme in the short stories “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “Araby,” by Irishman James Joyce. The term alienation is derived from The Theory of Alienation created by German philosopher Karl Marx. His theory was discovered in the 20th century after scholars found an unpublished study by Marx now titled, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Marx described his theory as a worker 's separation from the product the worker produces. This separation results in the worker being alienated from the product within the capitalist mode of production. In general terms, alienation means to feel foreign in the world or society you are living in. Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Araby,” the main …show more content…
Narrated from the point of view of a boy on the verge of adolescence, the story begins with a description of his exceedingly drab street. “An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground. The other houses of the street conscious of decent lives within them gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (251). By using adjectives like “uninhabited,” “blind,” “detached,” and “imperturbable” feelings of isolation instantly emerge in our minds because of Joyce’s depressing word choice. From the start, the boy is already alienated; the street he lives on is “blind” which means a street with a dead end. Furthermore, the protagonist personifies the houses by calling them “brown imperturbable faces.” His detached, uninhabited house is excluded from the other calm, normal houses causing him to feel

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