Looking in through a window at someone else living their life. That is what it feels like to be an outsider in society. People are excluded and forced to observe others while they watch, like a benched player on the sidelines of a game. The experience of being an outsider is universal but not permanent, as shown in The Doll’s House by Katherine Mansfield, By Any Other Name by Santha Rama Rau and Revenge of the Geeks by Alexandra Robbins. In The Doll’s House by Katherine Mansfield, the author uses the story to show that the experience of being an outsider is universal.
Mansfield sets the scene of the story by introducing the dollhouse that belongs to two rich girls, the Burnells. When they go to school the next day to brag about their dollhouse, they gather a large crowd as they describe the beauty that is the house. Outside of this crowd are the Kelveys. “[The] only two who stayed outside the ring were the two who were always outside. They knew better than to come anywhere near the Burnells.. the Kelveys were shunned by everybody” (p. 203). Else and Lil were children from a working class family with a very poor background compared to the other girls at the school.
This revented them from being invited to the Burnell’s house, causing them to be further left out, as they are the only ones who have not seen the house. AS the the story progresses, the reader observes that Kezia Burnell notices that the Kelveys feel left out and invites them over, against the wishes of everyone in their town. “You can come and see our doll’s house if you want to,’ said Kezia, and she dragged one toe on the ground. Presently our Else nudged up close to her sister. But now she had forgotten the cross lady.
She put out a finger and stroked her sister’s quill; she smiled her rare smile” (p. 06-207). While they were looking at the dollhouse, Aunt Beryl kicked the Kelveys out and they ran away to avoid anymore trouble. As they catch their breath, Else smiles. She feels moderately accepted by Kezia and is happy that she no longer sees herself as an outsider. The experience of being an outsider may be universal, but as this story shows, it is not a lasting experience. One person can change the way an outsider feels, all they have to do is reach out and treat them like a person, not a social outcast.
By Any Other Name by Santha Rama Rau is a piece of a emoir that explains Rau’s experience of being an outsider earlier in life. In this memoir, Rau describes her first day at an Anglo-Indian school and how she was treated by her teacher. Her older sister introduced them as Premila and Santha, but their teacher says, “Oh, my dears, those are much too hard for me. Suppose we give you pretty English names. Wouldnt that be jolly? Let’s see, now-Pamela for you, I think. ” She shrugged in a baffled way at my sister. That’s as close as I can get.
And for you’ she said to me, ‘how about Cynthia? Isn’t that nice? ” (Rau, paragraph 3). Their names are changed in school so that the teacher can pronounce them, but they are also trying to Europeanize the Indians at the school. There were only about twelve Indian children at this school, each with a new name. Even though these names are meant to make them blend in, they made the students feel even more like outcasts. The author describes not knowing what name to say in front of her class; at home she was Santha, but at school she was Cynthia.
Having to act completely different made her feel like she was two different people, furthering the notion of exclusion from everyone in her chool. One day, her sister bursts into her classroom and drags her home through the hot sun without any explanation. When they get home, she tells their mother that when she had taken her test, she was seated at the back with the other Indian children, for fear that they would cheat. Her mother does not know what to say, but they ultimately decide that not going back to that school is the best decision.
Both the author’s mother and sister believe that she did not understand what happened, but she writes, “I understood it perfectly, and I remember it all very clearly. But I put it happily away, because it had all happened to a girl called Cynthia, and I never was really particularly interested in her” (Rau, Paragraph 44). Santha knew that what she felt was not her feeling that way, but the girl she was forced to be based on racial stereotypes and the desire to make others conform. Cynthia was the one who was scared to say her name, the one who was laughed at by the English children; she was the one that felt like an outsider.
This feeling of being an outsider was not a constant, because she accepted who she was and that helped her see that being different was not a disadvar While some people may believe that being an outsider is a universal experience that lasts forever, there are people who never escape the feeling of being left out; the feeling of being a pariah. This may be true in some cases, but in the argument Revenge of the Geeks by Alexandra Robbins, she explains that outsiders have an advantage later in life compared to those that fit in during adolescence.
She also describes how outsiders use their characteristics that marginalized them to help society, writing, “Geeks profit from their technological knowhow. Emos benefit from being empathetic and unafraid to display emotion. Skaters, punks and others who pursue their arts with fervor benefit from the creativity they’ve honed. Gamers have learned both problem-solving skills and the ability to collaborate through collective intelligence.. there would be no progress – cures for diseases, ways to harness new energy sources without people who are different” (p. 26).
The evidence she gathered shows that the experience of being an outsider is not an eternal burden, but the one thing that creates innovation and advances the world. The outsiders that grow up to enrich society gain confidence and leave the world of being an outcast behind. Robbins uses examples of celebrities to strengthen her argument, saying, “Taylor Swift’s classmates left the lunch table as soon as she sat down because they disdained her taste for country music.
Last year, the Grammy winner was the nation’s top-selling recording artist” (p. 225). In this example, Taylor Swift age. disregarded what people thought of her to be the person she wanted. Her life as an outsider did not last forever, just like many others. By leaving the outsider behind, people become who they want, not what society views them as. Being an outcast is not a permanent state of living and those who were eft out in early life become those who stand out in adulthood.
Unwanted, unwelcome and unpopular; the feelings of an outsider. Although the memory of being excluded at some point in life sticks with someone, they are not stuck with being an outsider for the rest of their life. The experience of being an outsider is universal but not permanent, as shown in The Doll’s House by Katherine Mansfield, By Any Other Name by Santha Rama Rau and Revenge of the Geeks by Alexandra Robbins. These works show how outsiders can escape being on the outside, no matter the circumstance, age or ethnicity.
