Scarica Isolamento e l'Umano: Eveline e Gregor Samsa di Joyce e Kafka e più Tesine di Maturità in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! L’ISOLAMENTO DELL’UOMO In my exam paper I’m going to talk about isolation and how it affects the human being focusing the state of mind on two distinct, but very similar figures, both closed in their home / bedroom. In both works the home represents the place where the characters find their refuge, it is a safe place, a safe harbor even if the two protagonists do not find support in their family. The first character is Eveline who gives the title to one of the stories in the collection "The Dubliners" by James Joyce, the second character is Gregor Samsa, protagonist of „Die Verwandlung“, the best known story of the writer Franz Kafka in which he reports his state of isolation and abandonment. Eveline and Gregor Samsa are two examples of how isolation affects the human being leading them to have no points of reference, to fear of judgment, to be unable to make decisions and react to difficulties, to the point of being intimidated by their parents or, as we will see later, by an authoritarian father. James Joyce wrote the short story of Eveline in 1914. The story starts with Eveline, a nineteen-year-old girl, sitting at a window in her home and looking out onto the street while fondly recalling her childhood, when she played with other children. “She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains, and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired” (line 1-4). Her thoughts turn to her sometimes abusive father with whom she lives, and to the prospect of freeing herself from her hard life to support herself and her father. Eveline faces a difficult dilemma: remain at home like a dutiful daughter, or leave Dublin with her lover, Frank, who is a sailor. He wants her to marry him and live with him in Buenos Aires, and she has already agreed to leave with him in secret. She begins to favor the sunnier memories of her old family life, when her mother was alive and her brother was living at home, and notes that she did promise her mother to dedicate herself to maintaining the home. She remembers her mother’s uneventful, sad life, and passionately embraces her decision to escape the same fate by leaving with Frank. At the docks in Dublin, when the boat whistle blows and Frank pulls on her hand to lead her with him, Eveline resists. He continually shouts “Come!” but Eveline remains fixed to the land, motionless and emotionless. Eveline feels happy to leave her hard life, at the next moment she worries about fulfilling promises to her dead mother, revealing her inability to make a decision to let go of those family relationships, despite her father’s cruelty and her brother’s absence. All that Eveline can do is remain motionless, paralyzed, almost unable to think, "like a helpless animal", the life around her goes on while she remains alone, living a life as exiles at home. The state of isolation that Eveline feels is physical and mental because she doesn't choose to follow her love but she decides to return to a house where she has no affections. The window of her house where she lay her head is the border with the outside world. She is in conflict but even before with herself for her complex mentality, she is conditioned by the mentality of the society and by judgments, she thinks about what they would have thought of her if she had left her family. This condition of the isolation of the human being that I analyzed in Eveline can be found in many artistic works such as “L’assenzio” (1875), a painting by Edgar Degas, in which the woman is represented in a corner of the room next to a man who is totally indifferent to her. The face of the poor prostitute with sad and empty expressions shows us the state of abandonment and isolation. In Italian literature, many authors have analyzed the theme of isolation such as Giacomo Leopardi in “Il passero solitario” (1897) where the author compares himself with the sparrow. Alda Merini with “La solitudine” also wants to express the isolation that afflicts the human being, especially if he/she is sick. These aspects of Eveline's character just reported lead us to introduce another character, Gregor Samsa by Franz Kafka where the author will pour all his feelings and state of isolation. Franz Kafka wurde 1883 als Sohn eines jüdischen Kaufmanns in multikulturellen Prag geboren,dort studierte er Jura an der deutschen Universitӓt. Zwischen 1907 und 1908 arbeitet Kafka bei der privaten Versicherungsgesellschaft „Assicurazioni Generali“.
