World Literature

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,...