The concept of the ambition askew and materialism

On Viewing England For The First Time

The Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Ambition is a double-edged sword. One rewards the fierce determination needed to develop a daunting task, but is also wary of the greed and arrogance that can result from desire. Ambition by itself is neither a good nor bad characteristic, but it is known as a human one particular. Over time, the phrase “ambition” provides taken on a much more bad connotation such as recent history, greedy imperialists, dodgy elites, and materialistic capitalists have employed their goal to give food to their desire for honor, popularity, and electric power at the price of the well-being of others. It truly is perhaps due to these human qualities”to desire take pleasure in, honor, know-how, and power”and similarities to modern society which the theme of aspirations is widespread in literature. Personal narratives like In Seeing Britain for the First Time, plays such as Pygmalion, and Rushdie’s Ruby Slippers in East, West emphasize the consequences of ambition gone awry. Avarice, which makes personas oblivious to human compassion and humility, ends in destructive activities and consequences on personal and global levels.

Colonial British literature reflects the wide-ranging and pervasive impact of imperialistic avarice on English culture. Through ideals like the “white mans burden” and proud exclamations that “the sun never sets around the British empire. ” On the flip side, the literature from the subjugated ethnicities, such as Jamaica Kincaid’s In Seeing Great britain for the First Time, make an attempt to show the narrow-minded public to the horror of the imperialist machine as it seizes their monetary resources, area, and cultural identity. English superiority above natives forced Kincaid to think that she “was incomplete, or with no substance, and did not assess up” (Kincaid 374) mainly because she has not been English. To do so , your woman unknowingly contributed to the imperialist ideology, created to designate the colonized because “others, inches and thus to ignore the truth of the colonized culture and people. Colonists noticed Antigua, Kincaid’s hometown, only as monetarily profitable and a way to gain resources that were unavailable in Europe. Kincaid angrily identifies the greed which blinded them to the hegemony and dominance that they instilled above her community. The Uk set up limitations that eliminated the native economies coming from operating automatically, natives might produce the raw material for United kingdom manufacturing, however competition with British operate was eradicated as local people were required to only acquire British merchandise. Kincaid’s daily can of cocoa, box of oats, her shoes and boots, socks, and undergarments, the family’s car, and even her satin laces and ribbons were produce in England. Her father buys into the American styles of costume and behavior after getting compelled to “wear an unacceptable hat intended for hot local climate most of his long life” (Kincaid 366) to appear even more English. The brown experienced hat, which usually symbolizes the entire British dominance over Antiguan economy and culture, turns into so linked to the father’s personality that it becomes the first thing this individual puts on as well as the last thing this individual takes off. This kind of reinforced brainwashing in her personal life and in her education, in which she is advised to attract a map of Great britain one every single test, creates an outsider complex in which Kincaid will idolize British culture although never partake in it: “England is a unique jewel perfectly, and only exceptional people have to wear it” (Kincaid 365). Her cultural identity and value can be carelessly substituted in colonization. Everything in her existence, including very little, is “Made in England” (Kincaid 365), with “the exceptions becoming the sea, the sky, plus the air we all breathe” (Kincaid 366). Western greed intended for raw material and goal to industrialize their countries imposed traditions and personality on groupe, destroying the “reality” in the place and substituting that with an idea.

Similarly, colonial ideology is also seen to have an effect on class relationships, where the lower classes are inside foreigners, colonized by top classes, who employ strategies of imperial and colonial control. By going through the class, gender, and racial politics that influence social conventions in Pygmalion, Shaw reveals the complexities of how ambition and power will be closely associated with selfishness and material prize. Because he can be upper class, rich, and men, Higgins shows the inherent power in the lecture status, cash, and gender, which gives his ambition to “make [Eliza] a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe” (Shaw 16) a greedy and cold border. It is a electrical power he yields without conscience, eventually getting Eliza in a situation unfit for virtually any role inside their society. As he corrects her accent and grammar, dresses her in stunning dresses, and shows her modern day conversational behaviors, he turns into almost enthusiastic about creating the best human being: “how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different individual being¦It’s filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from category and soul from soul” (Shaw 43). Higgins’ objective is no longer to win a bet, to train Eliza, or even test out his own skill and intelligence. He believes he can bring together humankind, one person at the same time, and in his ambition to get social position and be a respectable man, Higgins disregard pertaining to the power video game he had developed and mistreated to remove Eliza of her freedom and id. Eliza herself is certainly not without aspirations, as your woman approaches Higgins to follow through to his present to better her position in society. Nevertheless , Higgins schooling bestows upon Eliza the energy she had to support herself, to conform, and to you should find an independence without the aid of Higgins. “I dont wish no platinum and no diamonds” (Shaw 19) Eliza declares, demonstrating how her ambition to retain her dignity and make a better life for herself offers her the skills to reject Higgins and firmly carve a place for very little in the new corners of society the girl can now check out. Eliza’s dad, on the other hand, in whose desire will be indolent pushes him to become just the contrary, acts as a foil to Eliza. A man content with poverty and life like a garbage enthusiast, Alfred Doolittle extorts just enough money for a drunken spree, declining more launched offered as they does not wish to be tempted to save and thus snare himself in middle-class responsibilities. Higgins sends a fooling letter into a millionaire, who subsequently bestows Doolittle a stipend to lecture within the morality this individual abhors. Doolittle feels forced to accept the remuneration, wonderful life is no more impoverished, although neither could it be as totally free and simple since it once was. Forced to become middle class, he or she must now adopt restrictive middle-class morality and marry his wife. Alfred Doolittle’s sarcastic ambition to become unambitious binds him to societal buildings and conventions on how to react, stripping him of his very beliefs and personality. Eliza is able to reshape her own identification despite remaining quite broke while her father gains great riches but seems as if this individual has damaged his person spirit. Shaw’s concepts of ambition and fame shows the consequences of both not enough and too much ambition: destruction of apathy and avarice is an almost dystopian-like culture divided not just by riches, but by accents, gestures, and materials goods.

Concentration on material success, whilst ignoring how striving for various rewards over and above mere fame, like specialist success and world peacefulness can be generally beneficial, is definitely captured in Salman Rushdie’s At the Public sale of the Dark red Slippers in East, West. The narrator describes an exceptionally capitalist society, very similar to modern-day Western world, where one particular bids for auctions for everything and anything, via edible underwear to the Eiffel Tower, within an ambitious reach for power, namesake, and musical legacy. The narrator describes a residential area where people “bid, the Auctioneers topple down a lot down, we pass on” (Rushdie 99), displaying just how life and success is becoming measured simply by objects which might be bought at the auction. This individual also says, with finish indifference, functions of total disregard pertaining to human life, such as the astronaut trapped in space due to lack of cash to return him to The planet, as if departing a human being to die was something regular. This isolating from empathy and remedying of people and objects while the same can be Rushdie’s tough criticism with the culmination of European imperialism and class division and how such greed has driven society crazy. The reddish colored ruby house shoes, most commonly linked to the Wizard of Oz, is usually symbolic of home and freedom, from fiction to reality, yet such independence must be paid for in this materialistic society. This kind of cult of apparently remarkable slippers presents how persons seem to are becoming subordinate and susceptible to the actual auctioneers, the hegemonic category, claim to be important, which is products and their promoting values. Like in Kincaid’s On Seeing England for the First Time and Shaw’s Pygmalion, imperialistic supremacy and specific class conferences tears the identities in the bidders away. The public sale hall is known as a place in which everyone can arrive and be acknowledged, but just by the auctioneer’s approval. They may have all recently been homogenized by the auctioneers, almost all visiting the same place because “Political refugees¦ conspirators, deposed monarchs, conquered factions, poets, [and] bandit chieftains” (Rushdie 91). A person is considered absolutely nothing more nor less than his or her money: “anyone’s cash is as good anyone else’s” (Rushdie 93). In the current society, human identity has ceased to be defined by simply moral actions, but by what one owns. The narrator grimly accentuates this point, declaring “In fiction’s grip, we might mortgage the homes, offer our children, to obtain whatever it is we crave” (Rushdie 102). Monetary desire has created a society through which something is regarded worthwhile if you have the acquisition of large amounts of money, rendering human emotion, id, and worth virtually pointless.

Finally, it is about individuals, if through literary works, politics, or perhaps daily life, to ascertain how they uses their desire. Modern society challenges to understand just how ambition can”and should”be put to work in a community that has new means of waging warfare, merging cultures, free-market economies, and evolving forms of communication. Shaw’s Pygmalion, Kincaid’s On Discovering England for the First Time, and Rushdie’s At the Market of the Dark red Slippers show the dangers of unchecked aspirations and how greed for power and beauty can lead to ability to ruin individuals and countries. Such would like to go through extremes to achieve goals can easily generate negative effects mainly because ambition values the individual plus the elite above everyone else, spiraling into devastating and harmful consequences to get identities, contemporary society, and man values.

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