“It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”
– Bertrand Russell
Our life is in a trap.
WHY? Because we all are in a great illusion of this materialistic world. Today, our life is often compared to a rat race……. perhaps because much of the time, we behave like rats who struggle for survival. But, unlike rats who only race to survive, we, human beings, chase endlessly in pursuit of success, achievements, name and fame, money, power, education and degrees and so on. We want to take advantage of every opportunity this conventional world has to offer.
But, even though the entire world has been poisonous by the aggression of the materialistic insects like us, there are always some strange and exceptional characters in this planet, who abandon every opportunity of this world, who always swim against the tides.
These are the people who find life’s meaning in the most unusual and absurd ways.
Somoy Shafi portrayed one of these unusual and absurd characters in his debut novel “America Lost an Idealist”
Dohan, a young idealist, a poet, lands in America with full of his idealistic dreams and aspirations, but the rampant capitalism, oppressive materialism, pro-American objectivism, tyrannical stereotyping, and severe alienation sucked out all the positivity in his life. In a few years, these negativities defining the world poisoned Dohan’s mind, heart and soul making him a worthless and ridiculous man in the society.
Unemployed and halfway to lunacy, this absurd man then acts weird and throws away every opportunity. He chases rat capitalists and pawnbrokers, he makes fun of the police, he talks to rivers and trees, and he burns money.
But, where does it end?
Will Dohan be able to free himself from the veil of pretension and greed in the society, or will he succumb to the devils of worldly possessions…just like how everybody else did?
