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Exile

An international prison​

By Daiana RMEPublished 4 years ago 6 min read
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People refer to exile as something unexplored, something that would never happen in their lives, but it can happen in a matter of a second and ruin the entire life of a human. Exile is something that, if it finds you, you won't be able to escape or hide from it, it is the confronting reality of accepting that there is nothing left but melancholic memories of what people used to know and consider their identity. Historically speaking there are thousands of cases where people are obligated to abandon what they love the most, leaving them with a single idea of what their life would be like; uncertainty, a feeling that traps people with their fears, their worries and frustration, blinding themselves with a darker perspective of what hope used to be. Exile, defined as nothing more than a personal prison, an idea that is substantially reflected through literature. The essay “Reflexions on exile” of the author Edward Said, explores the concept of what exile means today and its clear relationship with such destructive emotions, undoubtedly “The Refugee”, book written by Bernard Malamud, a supposed fictional story, has more connections with the real world and with Said's essay than with a fictional world filled with fallacies. Both texts portrait a single idea bonded with a theme, exile being a self molded prison that will chase and consume an individual’s entire life, leaving nothing more than a void that can’t be filled with a temporary and fake new place that can be considered a new home, but filled with frustration, anxiety, and fear.

Frustration a really big word that people use often, but it has a darker essence than the definition commonly used. Frustration might be one of the hardest feelings to accept, it is a self-consuming emotion that tears up the expectation of any individual, Oskar being a great example of this emotion. As the protagonist of the book “The Refugee” and a German jew immigrant hiding from the crude war and dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, he’s a unique way of expressing how he felt towards this new and unfamiliar world, showed his need to return to his real home. He closed so much to the idea that he was not able to survive into this whole new parallel world, that he believed his lie, he got frustrated to one point that he focused on nothing but his failure, “the thought of giving the lecture in English just about paralyzed him”, because Oskar first language was the German he had several difficulties while expressing and communicating his complete ideas in another language, thing that specifically made him think that it was not worth the try to that at the end there will be nothing but a miserable life with semi-banished memories of a past life filled with greatness. This refers the idea that Said is purposing in his powerful essay, about the impotence felt of coming against a wall where there is no scape or specific/clear solution, in other words, a prison, thought explored in the meaningful phrase that Oskar gave “Please I can no more stand of world misery” (Malamud, 1963).

“Exile is a jealous state” (Said, 2000), the greatest disability is the own mind of an individual; even though the refugees have literally their nation against them, it is their reaction what at the end will take over them and how the outcome of their life will be up to, linked to this thought is an emotion as destructive and uncontrollable as the same anger, anxiety. Reflected Oskar's desire to be with his wife came this anxiety with an uncertainty of what life prepares to him now that he is in an unfamiliar country where there is nothing for him, but a loss of his native place. According to Said's reflection on exile, “Exile is predicated on the existence of, love for and bond, with one’s native place” here’s an undoubtedly link through emotions of Oskar, since the protagonist has no knowledge about his particular home and family that had to leave behind it seems to be that he is controlled by the emotion and starts to play through every scenario of his new life conceiving every time a bigger and bigger accumulation of worries and panic that over-saturates the person creating a feeling of exhaustion, it develops a way of thinking in which the person truly believes that everything is going to fall apart and that the only way to end or at least slow down the process would be by pretending several emotions to cover their sad and dark reality that is inside of a person, undoubtedly the certain way that Oscar’s life was impacted through this emotion when arriving to face his new reality and eat with his fear.

Light and darkness pretty common things that we see every day in our daily life, both of them with different and opposite meanings depending on the perspective that each person gives to the word. Generalized we have the idea of the darkness and shadows being evil or scary something that we have to fear, and according to Michael Laitman, the meaning of darkness comes from that void that leaves the dissatisfaction of joy. That's how fear should be established, as something foreign and highly damaging, a black hole that drains any clue of happiness in someone’s life, in the words of Said “exile is the loss of contact with the solidarity and satisfaction of earth” (Said, 2000). In the Refugee there is a moment where the protagonist develops an extreme and destructive feeling of fear when moving on in a new life without such valuable things for him that are necessary for him, “Oskar confessed that he had attempted suicide the first week in America” (Malamud, 1963). Fear is one of those emotions that makes people act erratically, without any previous consideration, it is an unfavorable emotion that with agony drives people to a last and regrettable solution, suicide.

Without any doubt, every color palette needs black so it could be considered complete. The multiple colors being emotions around experiences. How each one expresses emotions is very curious. But it's just that, a name. There is no adequate definition to define what an individual may or may not feel. The most curious thing is the fact that each person represents him differently from another. Being in a different degree and style, in the case of Oskar there was always only one truth, but the way it progressively affected him was the determinant that locked him in a prison molded by himself with all the emotions he gathered, according to Said an exile has nothing assured, only the raw and painful truth. A truth that only with words comes to hurt a person like a dagger. Both texts have unquestionably a darker message that only one person can’t perceive in its totality, both handle emotions so in such a depth that continuously express through characters and real situations, at the end both texts include the life journey that a person has while facing a powerful situation.

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