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Category: English Composition
Date Submitted: 06/07/2011 04:05 AM
World Literature Assignment
Name of the School: B. D. Somani International School
Student’s Name: Vanshika Swaika
Candidate Number:
Session: May 2012
Title:
Sacrifice as a significant factor that leads to isolation in the characters of The
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende.
Word Count:
Sacrifice as a significant factor that leads to isolation in the characters of The
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende.
Sacrifice by definition is “an act of giving up something one values for the sake
of something that is more important”. It is a concept, which is an intrinsic part of
every individual’s life, as well as the lives of the characters in the books, The House
of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. However,
in both the books, the act of self-sacrifice or forced sacrifice leads to the inevitable
solitude of the character who has sacrificed or who has forced another character to
forgo. Hence this essay will emphasize on sacrifice, which leads to isolation through
certain instances that takes place in the life of these characters.
A common theme in both the books is that of sacrificing ones personal life
for the greater betterment of the family, which ultimately leads to seclusion. In The
House of the Spirits, Férula, Esteban’s sister, sacrifices her personal life in order to
take care of her ailing mother, which ultimately led to her loneliness and death –
“Without anything being said openly, the fact remained that the
daughter had sacrificed her life to care for the mother, and that she had
become a spinster for that reason.”1
Férula spent much of her youth looking after her paralyzed mother, Dona Ester.
She had forgone her beauty, which her brother Esteban Trueba saw when he said
“She was still a beautiful women with rich curves and the oval
face of a Roman Madonna,...