20Th Century A Strange Time Essay — страница 2

have come to use as a standard for how far man has come as species. Through a plot riddled with greed and a fa ade of order Durrenmattt demonstrated how the richest woman in the world could buy justice on her own terms, and how people would rationalize her want for revenge and their own outright greed for the prospects of a more comfortable life. The Guellner s (towns people), are offered what can be thought of as one billion dollars to murder a man, named Alfred, whom is branded to be their next mayor for a crime he committed in his youth. Never mind the irony that because he paid vagrants to lie and brand Claire Zachanassian (then known as Clara) a woman who knew her way around the bedroom he inadvertently setup the chain of events that permitted Zachanassian the opportunity to

acquire all her riches. At first the town s people publicly deny her, what she wishes, and the current mayor hypocritically says, “Justice can not be bought (Durrenmatt, 36). ” The town acquires monstrous debts on the assumption that things will work out for them. They believe Alfred Ill will die because that is just the way things should be, and good things should happen to them because they (the Guellner s) are “good people.” The town digs a hole so deep that it can only be filled with the death of Ill. Fortunately, for the town Ill has learned from his life and the tragic mistake of his youth and takes responsibility for his action because of a blind faith he shares in the laws of his land quite similar to the tacit agreement outlined by Plato in The Crito when he too

faced a community searching for a sacrificial lamb. Ill realizes that the Guellener s are not evil and that they like he must find meaning in their own lives. Although his execution will be a mistake, he understands the fatality inherent in life and bears the burden of a town for the prospects of a better life for the people whom he had the privilege of calling countrymen. He allows them to ascribe “right” to expediency, and sacrifices his own life so that they can move past the ugliness of their current greed and simply continue with the cruel unpredictable game that is life. Seize the day, written by Saul Bellow in 1956 whom also a received the Nobel Prize for Literature, captures mans displacement in the twentieth century. In the course of a day of the protagonist of the

novel, New York native Wilhelm Adler, stands by and watches his world unravel while he is helpless to affect the type of change he feels is necessary for his survival. This account seamlessly exposes a neurosis man has acquired as a direct result of his powerless yet unmatched position on the face of the earth. A smart fellow, with the ability to analyze himself and others Adler is paralyzed by the duty he feels to his children and wanting to please his father, while realizing that his circumstances are merely those of life and he really should not require the assistance he believes he so desperately needs. An unwise business deal with a man whom he is sure is less than truthful leaves Adler out in the cold and stumbling hysterically crying into a stranger s funeral at the end of

the day he so futilely tried to seize. In all three examples great things that he has been able to control surround man. It is simply up to him to recognize his limits and move on. The world post bomb, as is the case with all three works, gave man new hope through exposing his limits and revealing the tricks he must utilize to survive in a world that cares not about his survival.