What Is The Theme Of Lonely Places By Pico Iz Summary

Lonely Places Aren’t Actually Lonely

Labelling our world has been a human constant; it’s how the human world is rationalized. It’s something we all do in order to asses what we have and what we need to do. Labels are used for everything, whether it be people, language, or a country, and by labelling things we set them apart by the rest and decide on our stance accordingly. In his article “Lonely Places” Pico Iyer labels the countries he visited as lonely places and explains why these countries do not fit in with the rest and why they’re isolated. From the start, with Iyer’s explanation of the ritual he has with his friends in Cuba, the readers get a sense of what exactly he means by a lonely place. Describing the atmosphere in those countries the author tries to justify his reasoning for labelling these countries as lonely places. Labelling countries as “lonely places” is too biased and condescending because these places aren’t really lonely, and the term lonely adds a negative connotation

The rest of the world he’s talking is the first world countries or “Eurasamerican village” as he calls it. In his last paragraph Iyer, says, “lonely places, then, are the places that are not on international wavelengths, do not know how to carry themselves”. But so what? Why should we label these countries, or any country in fact, as lonely places? Why should we care that they do not ‘fit in’? A deeper look into the essay shows that these places aren’t labelled as such just because they are “lonely” but rather because they are isolated or alienated from the others for being below the standards of what is considered to be normal by the rest. From his tone and descriptions, we can see that even the author himself looks down on these countries for being different and not normal, not like the rest of the