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Dubliners by J.Joyce (riferimento a 'Eveline' e 'The dead')

“Dubliners” is a collection of fifteen short stories written by James Joyce in which the author analyses the failure of self-realisation of inhabitants of Dublin in biographical and in psychological ways. The novel was originally turned down by publishers because they considered it immoral for its portrait of the Irish city. Joyce treats in “Dubliners” the paralysis of will in four stages: childhood, youth, maturity and public life. The paralysis of will is the courage and self-knowledge that leads ordinary men and women to accept the limitations imposed by the social context they live in. In “Dubliners” the style is both realistic - to the degree of perfectly recreating characters and idioms of contemporary Dublin - and symbolic – giving the common object unforeseen depth and a new meaning in order to show a new view of reality. Joyce defines this effect “epiphany” which indicates that moment when a simple fact suddenly explodes with meaning and makes a person realise his / her condi

Anthony Burgess's novel 1985: a continuum of 1984


Anthony Burgess is considered one of the most important writers of 20th century, whose most famous dystopian novels are A Clockwork Orange, The Wanting Seed and Nineteen Eighty-Five.
1985 is divided into two sections, a narrative and a nonfiction, which, recalling Orwell's novel 1984, deals with a dystopian universe now in ruins and governed by trade unions.
The protagonist Bev Jones does not share the ideology and discipline imposed by the Unions.
He witnesses the death of his wife, who is burned alive in a hospital during a firefighters strike; his wife's last words are: "Don’t let them go unpunished".
Bev, thus, begins a lonely and desperate struggle, in the name of freedom of choice between good and evil, right and wrong, will and convenience.
He is not a wishful character, but a citizen against violent crowd, language made not to say and demeaning life.
Persecuted by trade unionism, which fights for false freedom, and by disorder as an instrument of ruthless order, Bev will pay for the worst crime against the new welfare state: non-conformism.
The character Bev Jones of 1985 and Winston of 1984 are individuals who do not accept the system and ideology of that society governed by people who hold full powers.
Unfortunately, they will not succeed in their own endeavour: they will be treated in a way that will cause them to lose their personality and individuality and become victims of conformism.
Bitter parable about the political and cultural myths of our time, 1985 communicates to the reader the same message as Orwell’s novel 1984: do not allow yourself to be influenced by conformism because it is the worst crime that can be committed against the new welfare state.
Burgess's novel is a continuum of Orwell's dystopian novel, which is described as the most famous image of a future world not as one would like it to be.
However, Burgess says: "The scenario described in 1984 is still not the worst of the possible imaginary worlds. The picture, thirty years after the book was published, is getting worse rather than better."
Thus, in this novel Burgess makes an analysis and a representation of our world, with a chilling likelihood whose roots are already in today.
The dystopian literary genre, so, becomes for Burgess a warning to an opposing reality of man.
Chosen down religion, the individuality of man and his freedom, the new world will be in danger, with its spiritual or technological surrogates, wishful ideologies and senseless wars; in this way, man is reduced to a gear.
And when the gear fails, you either repair it or throw it away.
In a clockwork world the most important thing is that the machine continues to work.
The rest, after all, counts for nothing.

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