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Quote Citations:
Carpentier, Alejo. "Journey Back To The Source"
Singh, Vandana. "Delhi"
McDonnel, Carole. "Lingua Franca."

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Quote Citations:
Carpentier, Alejo. "Journey Back To The Source"
Singh, Vandana. "Delhi"
McDonnel, Carole. "Lingua Franca."

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All three stories experience a sort of isolation, although to varying degrees - they spend much of their respective stories in their own heads, guaranteeing that which ever way the world is presented to us, it is almost certainly only presented as such because it's what these character see.

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All three stories experience a sort of isolation, although to varying degrees - they spend much of their respective stories in their own heads, guaranteeing that which ever way the world is presented to us, it is almost certainly only presented as such because it's what these character see.

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I'm reminded of the debate over "mainstreaming" deaf students by enrolling them in public schools rather than schools for the deaf, and how it unintentionally had adverse effects by essentially isolating deaf students in an environment where only a few people were trained to understand them, rather than being able to easily find a community with which to learn how to connect with others.

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Both of these points are best cemented by the final line, "But as her mother marched ahead, she looked behind at her cousin, smiled, and whispered something her mother could not hear."

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Carole McDonnel's "Lingua Franca" is a departure from the warping of the flow of time the last two pieces explore. It instead explores a cultural inversion - deafness is the norm, and the abled people of Earth are the outsiders whom the protagonist sees as trying to erase her culture, which can either be taken as a critique of how the deaf population is already treated in the real world, or older generations' unwillingness to accept change and how it can unintentionally drive a wedge between them and their children, or perhaps both.

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This is actually for another work of Singh's but I feel as though it best captures the feeling of moving through these different time periods

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"But he knows that apart from the Emperor, nobody he has communicated with is of any real importance in the course of history, and that he is simply deluding himself about his own significance," illustrates that the future as it stands does not have a purpose for Aseem, and does not care to give him one. Aseem finds his own in keeping figures of the past alive, but he does this more out of a desire to have a purpose than he does out of the goodness of his heart.

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The strangeness of Delhi by Vandana Singh is immediately apparent by contrast, with the protagonist Aseem having the ability to catch glimpses of and briefly interact different time periods through apparitions. Similar to Carpentier's writing and magical realism, it's very easy to find characteristics of this story that would later go on to become wildly popular in modern science fiction, namely the idea of a technological advanced but morally bankrupt future.

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I'm reminded of The Curious Cage of Benjamin Button, which I watched when I was too young to understand much of anything, and made for a similarly disorienting experience. In hindsight I'm not sure I would recommend this as heavily as the short story, but it is tangentially relevant. https://youtu.be/O6wP_LKA0DE

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Perhaps the quote that finally makes it clear what is happening is in part seven - "Bit by bit, Marcial stopped trying to learn these things, and felt relieved of a heavy burden.  His mind grew gay and lively, understanding things in a purely instinctive way. Why think about the prism, when the clear winter light brought out all the details in the fortresses guarding the port? An apple falling from a tree tempted one to bite it - that was all"

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Alejo Carpentier's "Journey Back To The Source" depicts the tale of a man's life being told backwards, beginning with his death and ending with his birth. The strangeness comes from how it is written so that Don Marcial is experiencing this regression alongside the audience - his world warps around him so that his furniture reverts back to woodland, until eventually even his home is undone. It serves to create a very disorienting experience.