Look to the future and beware. How and to what effect have writers depicted the future? Discuss with reference to 2-3 works that you have studied.Wislawa Szymborska and Henrick Ibsen

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Look to the future and beware. How and to what effect have writers depicted the future? Discuss with reference to 2-3 works that you have studied.

The future has always been an area of interest for humans. We have tried to devise different ways of predicting it since our ever so curious brains want to know everything that will happen in the forthcoming time. The ironical part about this “prediction” is that we somewhere down the line know that this is impossible because the power which is making our world run can’t be figured out so easily and future being one of its deepest and darkest secrets is definitely not something this power will let out to us.

Moreover, it is not only the common man who falls for this ‘foretelling’ trap. Many eminent writers have also been a part of this, Wislawa Szymborska and Henrick Ibsen being one of them. They have talked about future in their works but not always in the positive way because future portrayed as pleasant and delightful becomes uninteresting and unbelievable because the human psyche takes time to believe the inevitable – the fact that the future doesn’t have to be problematic and challenging, it can be full of bliss and ecstasy. But, nevertheless, both the writers have written about how we must look at the future as depicted in their poems or plays and learn from them, the message of discretion and caution.

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One of Wislawa Szymborska’s works is “hatred”. It is an ode to hatred where hatred is endlessly praised and extolled against all the emotions, even love. Wislawa, in this poem, has conveyed a very strong message even though it is conveyed in a sarcastic way. Her praise of hatred is like a big taunt to the readers especially when she puts up questions like, “since when does brotherhood draw crowds?… only hatred has what it takes”. Her putting up of such a rhetorical question tells us that she is trying to arouse in the reader’s mind the fact that it ...

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