The Strugatsky’s 1972 book Roadside Picnic ends with a single wish: “Happiness for Everyone, for Free, and don’t leave anybody out!”. Spoken by Red, a wish for happiness captures the idea of a dystopia, as ironic as it sounds. As a stalker, Red collects artifacts in a dangerous ‘Zone’ left behind by a brief alien visit that did not contact humanity. The visit and the Zone reveal the insignificance of humanity, yet the humans focus instead on the strange artifacts left behind. In Red’s speech to the golden ball, an object that grants any wish, happiness captures an ideal filled with exploration and limitless possibilities which to Red is represented in the dystopian Zone. This wish reveals what it means to be human: striving towards perfection that is impossible to obtain because to Red, the Zone represents happiness, but the Zone simply cannot coexist with happiness. Red, although his actions sometimes do not reflect his morals, is a good character overall. When it came down to making a wish for anything his heart desired, he did not make a selfish or malicious wish, instead wishing for happiness for all. His concern for Kirill, Guta, the monkey, even the Vulture and Archie for the most part, displays his good nature …show more content…
When compared to the aliens and their rubble, we are insignificant, yet Red’s life and his meaning of the word happiness, the Zone and the adventuring within, uncovers secrets about humanity that would not be evident without the contact. Striving towards an impossible perfection, through the Zone, a picturesque dystopia, being represented in the word ‘happiness’ mirrors Red’s disregard for the fact that aliens find humanity unworthy of contact. His wish overall does not express the idea of endless curiosity and desire that truly encompasses happiness to Red, yet he still wishes for “HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!”
The struggle between happiness and society shows a society where true happiness has been forfeited to form a perfect order.
What would happen if an utopia wasn’t all that perfect on the inside? Judging by just the appearance of something may lead to a situation of regret and confusion.” The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson address the theme of religious and traditional symbolism.” The Lottery” demonstrates how something that seems so perfect on the outside isn’t all that great on the inside.
Thinkers and philosophers have been pondering misery since the dawn of civilization. At the dawn of humanity, humans existed to survive and reproduce; every day was a struggle. However, with the advent of civilization, humanity has moved further and further away from its original evolutionary drives, and it can be argued by secular thinkers that humans exist now to find happiness. Therefore, misery can be seen as the biggest obstacle to human happiness, yet misery itself is a mystery to many. Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents put forth the authors’ opinions on the origins of mortal misery, and suggest methods to solve the problem of misery. Although the two have differing views, both see
The American Dream is said to be realised through hard work and perseverance ; it is ostensibly a reachable goal for anyone who chooses to exercise their ‘inalienable right’ to the ‘pursuit of Happiness.’ This ambiguous phrase, ‘the pursuit of Happiness’ was originally inserted into the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson and is a clear and overriding concern in The Great Gatsby. In the 1920s, when the novel is set, America was experiencing a newfound level of prosperity; the economy was booming and the possibility of gaining wealth became an achievable reality. As a result, the pursuit of happiness in The Great Gatsby is far from the founding fathers’ initial intentions and instead, in this new context, Fitzgerald demonstrates the confusion of happiness with money and social standing. American ideals were replaced with a fixation to gather material wealth regardless of consequence, and success no longer required hard work. Fitzgerald clearly depicts this mutated pursuit of happiness through the setting and characterisation in the novel. Revolutionary Road similarly reflects this altered American pursuit through the naivety and self-delusion of the characters and their actions.
Many people value the tangible over the complex. However, viewing the world solely through this definite lens is an oversimplification. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We explores this flaw in a society founded solely upon its government’s definition of the “ultimate happiness.” To reach utopia, it eliminates inefficiency, crime, and despondency, by promoting state-led happiness. Despite these admirable goals, the One State’s methods sacrifice freedom, individualism, and, ironically, happiness itself, ultimately failing its mission. Zamyatin explores the emotionless routine within the One State to assert that happiness cannot exist when controlled and rationalized.
Within the real world individuals constantly ask: Does money actually equal happiness? Money doesn’t equal happiness, money equals superiority or privilege and happiness equals desire. Similarly, in Scott Fitzgerald's’ The Great Gatsby, Tom, Daisy and Gatsby portray money equals superiority and happiness equal desire by the actions they chose to make as well as their deep sentiments.
Everyone in the world has one thing in common. Every single person wants love. Ted Hughes’s beautiful poem “A Moon-Lily” uses an extended metaphor to compare a moon-lily to love. At the poem’s beginning, the speaker describes the “moon-lily” as “marvelously white” (1). The speaker uses the color white as a symbol of purity, wholeness, and completeness. A person feels whole and complete when they are in love. The speaker is implying that the flower is love and that the love is pure. The persona uses this image of love to describe the type of love one person tries to give to another. In this poem the person giving the love is the woman and the person refusing their love is the man. In Hughes’s “A Moon-Lily” the speaker compares a moon-lily to
Atwood’s “Happy Endings” retells the same characters stories several times over, never deviating from clichéd gender roles while detailing the pursuit of love and life and a happy ending in the middle class. The predictability of each story and the actions each character carries out in response to specific events is an outline for how most of us carry on with our lives. We’re all looking for the house, the dog, the kids, the white picket fence, and we’d all like to die happy.
As in this example in “Flower Garden,” Shirley Jackson uses color throughout “The Lottery,” “Elizabeth,” and “Flower Garden” to symbolize a persistent theme of underlying cruelty in everyday life. Although she achieves it sometimes through a shocking twist as in “The Lottery” and sometimes through subtle characterization as in “Elizabeth,” human malevolence is common in Jackson’s works. It is difficult to imagine a writer with a greater focus on the subject. Jackson has taken a clear position regarding the question of the humanity’s true nature. It is up to the reader to decide whether to follow her views or reject them.
In contrast to Aristotle, Roko Belic’s documentary “Happy” provides a fresh perspective that takes place far more recently. The film sets out to similar goals of Aristotle in defining the nature of happiness and exploring what makes different people happy in general. Unlike Aristotle, however, the film’s main argument refers to makes people happier. In this case, the film argues that merely “doing what you love” is what leads to happiness (Belic). The argument itself appears oddly self-serving, considering that message is what underlines the foundation of happiness, yet there is a subliminal message that a simpler lifestyle is what leads to what the film is trying to convince you of. The message itself is obviously addressed to Americans, considering
The story starts out in what seems like a beautiful, organized and happy place called the omelas. The Omelas is a green happy utopia where music plays everywhere, and where everyone is full of joy. Le Guin tries to make this place seem as happy as possible but as the story progresses it gets darker, and i think this was done on purpose because every utopia is a place where things seem to be fine at the surface but in reality it isn't. This utopia which he says everyone is happy in seems like its a false statement because over time he says people are getting less and less happy and smiles have become a thing of the past, which again goes back to same idea of the utopia, happy but not happy. Le also talks about the kids being very happy and racing
All in all, Chris McCandless is a contradictory idealist. He was motivated by his charity but so cruel to his parents and friends. He redefined the implication of life, but ended his life in a lonely bus because of starvation, which he was always fighting against. Nevertheless, Chris and the readers all understand that “happiness only real when shared.” (129; chap.18) Maybe it’s paramount to the people who are now alive.
For years, authors and philosophers have satirized the “perfect” society to incite change. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a so-called utopian society in which everyone is happy. This society is a “controlled environment where technology has essentially [expunged] suffering” (“Brave New World”). A member of this society never needs to be inconvenienced by emotion, “And if anything should go wrong, there's soma” (Huxley 220). Citizens spend their lives sleeping with as many people as they please, taking soma to dull any unpleasant thoughts that arise, and happily working in the jobs they were conditioned to want. They are genetically altered and conditioned to be averse to socially destructive things, like nature and families. They are trained to enjoy things that are socially beneficial: “'That is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny'” (Huxley 16). Citizens operate more like machinery, and less like humans. Humanity is defined as “the quality of being human” (“Humanity”). To some, humanity refers to the aspects that define a human: love, compassion and emotions. Huxley satirizes humanity by dehumanizing the citizens in the Brave New World society.
Beyond the shield of civilization and into the depths of a primitive, untamed frontier lies the true face of the human soul. It is in the midst of this savagery and unrelenting danger that mankind confronts the brooding nature of his inner self.
...ze anything other than the awful finality of despair. The sense of healing and salvation at the end of The Waste Land indicates that there is hope for meaning, even in fractured worlds and obfuscated poems. But it is up to each of us to discover it.