The Theme of Alienation in Literature

A self-conscious critic of his craft as a dramatist, Bertolt Brecht gives the name "A-effect" or alienation effect to the process whereby a scene or play may "allow the spectator to criticize [a situation] constructively from a social point of view" (Brecht 91). A similar approach to narrative fiction can be identified in the work of Poe, Melville, and Conrad, inasmuch as alienation is embedded into the narrative structure of their respective stories. Each is told by a first-person-peripheral narrator (Marlow in Heart of Darkness, Dupin's friend in "The Purloined Letter," the lawyer in "Bartleby, the Scrivener") whose focus is on the person who is the narrator's subject (Kurtz, Dupin, Bartleby). The device enables readers to "watch" how alienation becomes a major feature of character behavior and narrative action.

Conrad's Heart of Darkness presents a criti

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f death. The alien hero of "The Purloined Letter" is Poe's detective Dupin, whom the narrator's manifest text locates outside--more exactly above--the mainstream of French society because of his powers of ratiocination. The imagery of isolation is present in the first lines of the story, which finds the narrator secluded with Dupin "in his little back library, or book-closet" (Poe 208). when the Prefect arrives to beg Dupin's help. The Prefect repeatedly references Dupin's "odd notions," and the fact that he appeals to Dupin after having exhausted all notions of his own is a clue to the portrayal of a character whose intellect is quite different from the intellects of most people. Further confirmation comes from Dupin's knowledge of Minister D as both poet and mathematician, the poetic or mathematical turn of mind being insufficient to the task of staying ahead of the Prefect's ability to reason. Dupin tacitly claims the same talent for himself, thoroughly identifying with the mental processes of Minister D and thereby outthinking him with regard to the hiding place of the letter (Poe 215-17). Now the notion of identification with another seems to belie the assertion of Dupin as an alien presence. However, the ability to inhabit
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2759
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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