Stranger Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Stranger - Essay Example Also it is acknowledged that every city has a character of its own and to understand a city, we have to understand its character and the contributing factors for that particular character. This is mainly trying to understand the cities, its mobility, movement and settlement and the connected tensions. It is interesting to analyse what exactly is a city. It is a beehive of transactions, a centre of old and new buildings and heritages, leading to nostalgia and modernity, a mobile point in geography where everything seems to be moving, changing and altering at a highly intense pace and nothing static anywhere. If a city has to be watched, it should be done by stepping back, removing self from the humming mainstream and watch it like a hawk in the sky and then the right perspective of the city emerges. The picture presented is stunning in its originality and every piece of it is melting only to solidify itself into another shape, colour and form. Hence, the watcher finds pre-diluted forms, diluting material, half diluted forms, fully diluted shapeless mass, half-formed pictures and then, totally altered new forms. It is a thriving enormous pulsating mass of various puzzles that are always on the move, anxious to attain the next form. For a stranger, city presents this confusing and p uzzling picture. The seemingly unruly aggressiveness of the society and its presented disorder threatens him. Mostly it is an outside pose and need not be true. "Constructions of 'disorder' and 'order' are inextricably linked, and in any given urban context they frequently appear as 'idealized imageries'. However, it is only in the company of strangers in city spaces that they are symbiotically realized," (Pile et al, p.135). City cannot have one geography or one history because it is a synthesizer of multiple geographies and histories. It is a merger of various backgrounds and diverse activities. It is also a tantaliser with new possibilities and newer interactions. It is true that cities could be understood and characterised only through their historical, social and global context and not individually removed and isolated. City has to be filled with myriad flows and connections like people, ideas, cultures, rituals, principles, social priorities etc. and only then as a mixture of all these interconnections it could be analysed. Cities do not shake off their history easily. Even if they attain hitherto unrecognised proportions, its history can be recognised in every corner of the city. "There are strong echoes of the past which remain forceful in representations of urban disorder which are dominant today through, for example, notions of 'dangerous classes' such as 'out of place'" (Pile et al, 1999, p.88). A stranger coming into a certain city could be a city dweller, belonging to another city, or an individual based in a rural community and hence, his reactions would be different to the city life depending on his own background. He could either be comparing it with his earlier city favourably or negatively and this would prejudice his outlook and adjusting capabilities. If he is from a rural region, his reactions would be of wonder, loathing, contempt, surprise and amazement. He might even feel threatened by the all-consuming power of the city, because cities have their own