Living With Strangers

1204 Words5 Pages
The metropolis is a result of the growing urbanisation since the 1800s industrialisation, where the number of employments multiplied in the cities whereas they dropped in the country. When living in a metropolis with such a large number of people, different challenges are created on a daily basis. Challenges such as ordinary greetings, intimacy and communication between fellow citizens, when interacting with hundreds of thousands strangers daily. This is the theme Siri Hustvedt debates in her essay “Living With Strangers” from 2002, as she writes about the complications that have to be managed when living in large city societies. She divides her essay into three parts, with a presentation, elaboration and discussion. In lines 1-20 Hustvedts presents the debate by telling her personal story on how she moved from the country where everyone greets each other, to the metropolis New York, where she lives with a large number of strangers. Even though she is in near physical contact with these strangers every day, they do not share any decent exchanges. It soon becomes clear, how the cities unspoken law is to ignore all interactions: ”… I found myself in intimate contact with people I didn’t know, my body pressed so tightly against them, I could smell their hair oils, perfumes, and sweat. In my former life, such closeness belonged exclusively to boyfriends and family. It didn’t take long for me to absorb the unwritten code of survival in this town[…]: PRETEND IT ISN’T HAPPENING.” (ll. 15-20) By using her personal experience as an introduction to the theme, Hustvedt catches the attention of her reader’s, as case stories appeal to the public by seeming more sincere and existent. This technique also makes it possible for the reader to identify oneself with the writer. As the subject isn’t an abstract theme, but something that is of importance for both the writer
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