scholarly journals ROHINTON MISTRY’S FAMILY MATTERS AS A TEXT OF ‘GERONTOLOGY’

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1(SE)) ◽  
pp. 28-31
Author(s):  
Vidhya Thangalakshmi

‘Gerontology’ is a term that refers to the scientific study of old age, the process of aging and the special problems of old people. This paper will discuss about the problems of the old man, Nariman Vakeel from the novel Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. Though the definition focusses on the three aspects of old age namely (i) scientific study (ii) process of aging and the (iii) special problems of old people. Mistry as a literary writer focusses mainly on the last one that is the special problems of old people. Mistry also concentrates on the aging process; the aging refers to a multidimensional process of physical, psychological and social changes. With these perceptions in his mind he narrates the story of an old man aged 79 affected by Parkinson disease. He faces health problems and because of it, he faces problems with his children, his familial relationship as a father and as a grandfather is spoiled; and that affects him psychologically day by day throughout the novel. This paper aims at suggesting a few solutions to the problems of old age people which may contribute to better understanding of individuals at home and in society.

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-88
Author(s):  
Maren Tova Linett

Chapter 2 takes a disability studies approach to aging by viewing Brave New World (1932) as a thought experiment that explores the value of old age. Reading the novel alongside Ezekiel Emanuel’s claim that it would be best for everyone to die at around age seventy-five, before their abilities begin to decline, the chapter reads the absence of old people in the World State as an aspect of its dystopia. The chapter first argues that the persistent youth embraced by the society robs life of its narrative arc and thereby of an important aspect of its meaning. It then explores the reasons suggested by the novel that such a sacrifice of life narratives is not worthwhile, even to avoid periods of possible disability or frailty. Brave New World makes clear that the excision of old age has significant political, moral, and emotional costs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Fredrik Westerlund

The article discusses ageing and old age in three of George Sand’s texts: Indiana (1832), La Mare au diable (1846) and the first part of the novel Consuelo (1842). I use the first two parts of Pat Thane’s subdivision of age into a corporal, a cultural and a chronological component. In Sand’s fiction, the ageing female body withers, while the male body is worn. There are various reasons behind the decline. If the characters age of worries and trouble, the process can be reversed, and the persons can regain youth – at least partly – when the troubles go away. In a cultural perspective, the living conditions vary substantially between classes, specifically if the characters need to work for their living or not. Among peasants and workers, the tolerance for the age gap between spouses is narrower than in the bourgeoisie. The former risk to encounter poverty and need if the husband grows old sooner than the wife, while an elderly man of the bourgeoisie can marry a young woman in order to preserve her social status. In both classes, characters considered as old, while wise and experienced, do not longer interest anyone. Death is their future, and they ridicule themselves if they initiate long-term projects. Another stereotype, the old fool, appears as well, but in the case of Madame Carjaval, it is a role she plays to protect her niece. Many of the attitudes towards old people still exist today. The main difference vis-à-vis George Sand’s time is that, due to the development of longevity, old age arrives to people later now than in the 19th century.


GeroPsych ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva-Marie Kessler ◽  
Catherine E. Bowen

Both psychotherapists and their clients have mental representations of old age and the aging process. In this conceptual review, we draw on available research from gerontology, social and developmental psychology, and communication science to consider how these “images of aging” may affect the psychotherapeutic process with older clients. On the basis of selected empirical findings we hypothesize that such images may affect the pathways to psychotherapy in later life, therapist-client communication, client performance on diagnostic tests as well as how therapists select and apply a therapeutic method. We posit that interventions to help both older clients and therapists to reflect on their own images of aging may increase the likelihood of successful treatment. We conclude by making suggestions for future research.


Author(s):  
Endang Maruti

The research aims to uncover the symbols in the novel The Alchemist and to gain knowledge about the moral teachings in the symbol. This research is descriptive qualitative approach. Data sources in this study are words, phrases or sentences in the novel Alchemist. Data collection method is a literature study method with note taking technique. Data were analyzed using description and content analysis methods. The results showed that the novel The Alchemist contained many symbols. These symbols include: (1) wise parents, who symbolize both negative and positive things. From his appearance, parents can symbolize something bad, but behind his old age he symbolizes a knowledge that is very much and wise; (2) stones that symbolize something hard, not easily broken, and can provide clues to something; and (3) deserts or deserts which can be interpreted as symbols of drought, aridity, unattractiveness, emptiness, despair, determination for ignorance, and also as symbols of devotion.  


1964 ◽  
Vol 110 (468) ◽  
pp. 668-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. K. Kay ◽  
P. Beamish ◽  
Martin Roth

In a previous paper (Kay, Beamish and Roth, 1963) we studied the prevalence of various kinds of psychiatric disorder in a random sample of old people living at home in Newcastle upon Tyne. During the interviews, special attention was paid to the collection of social data. For, as Townsend (1957a) pointed out, old age is an epoch of diminishing social contacts and domestic support, and isolated old people make disproportionately heavy demands on the institutions of the Health and Welfare Services. By comparing the medical status and social circumstances of subjects with organic brain syndromes, those with functional disorders, and those without psychiatric abnormality, we have attempted to explore further the relative importance of these factors in the two main groups of mental disorders in old age.


2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-103
Author(s):  
Peter Leman
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  

Abstract This article examines Nuruddin Farah's 1979 novel Sweet and Sour Milk, asking how we read representations of postcolonial mourning and living death in the context of global authoritarianism. The first novel in Farah's influential dictatorship trilogy, Sweet and Sour Milk introduces us to “the General,” a fictionalized version of Siyad Barre, who ruled Somalia from 1969 to 1991. Like Barre's, the General's power exemplifies what Achille Mbembe calls “necropolitics,” or “the contemporary subjugation of life to the power of death.” The General's necropower manifests, peculiarly, as a politics of substitution—that is, when he takes a life, he leaves something in its place. Rebels do not simply disappear; they are killed and then given sycophantic zombie afterlives in the General's propaganda. In response to this politics of substitution, Farah explores a politics of mourning, which insists upon the irreplaceability of lost love objects and thereby broadly reveals what truly can and cannot be substituted. The General insists on the uniqueness of his power, for example, but Farah reveals it to be a cliché, easily substituted by that of other dictators throughout history. Cliché becomes revolutionary in this way, suggesting that dictators share a common fate: they will be deposed or, eventually, die of old age. However, like a horde of the living dead, others like them will return. The article concludes with analysis of the apparent pessimism of this point and the global implications of Farah's ideas about both necropolitics and the limits of the novel form in the face of authoritarian power.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 1008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana B. Navarro ◽  
Belén Bueno

<p>This paper assesses the strategies for coping with health problems in advanced old age and their contribution in terms of several performance results. 159 people aged 75 or over and living at home identified their most recent health problem, the strategies used to deal with it, their perception of self-efficacy in handling the problem and their degree of satisfaction with life. The results confirm the use of a range of strategies, with the active-behavioural approach to solving the problem being the one most widely used. In addition, together with active coping strategies of both a cognitive and behavioural nature, correlational analyses indicate that very old people resort to passive and avoidance coping methods. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses highlight the fact that the use of direct and rational actions for solving health problems predicts self-efficacy in dealing with the problem and protects satisfaction with life at this stage. These results confirm that very old people retain the ability to deal effectively with their health problems and, at the same time, uphold their well-being, providing evidence of the adaptive role of coping in very old age.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 401-414
Author(s):  
Albert Nowacki

Youth to old age: respect or depreciation? Namir! by Lubko DereshThis article deals the problem of old age in the novel Namir! by Ukrainian writer Lubko Deresh. To accomplish this research task, at the beginning of the presentation problem of how the elderly was presented in culture and literature over the centuries was analyzed, and then was analyzed the novel itself. Studies have shown that in his book the author raised the question of a confrontation of youth with an old age. Our analyzes of Namir! by Deresh turned out that it repeats the patterns of mass culture, showing atendency to devaluation the elderly. During the study revealed, however, achange in approach to the problems of old age, which is visible attitude of respect for the elderly linked to equality in the face of inevitable death.Молодість перед старістю: пошана чи зневага? Намір! Любка ДерешаМетою цієї статті є спроба показати проблему старості в романі українського пись­менника Любка Дереша Намір! Щоб успішно висвітлити так окреслене завдання, на по­чатку було звернено особливу вагу на те, як питання старості представлялося культурою та літературою протягом століть, і тільки тоді було звернено увагу на саму повість. Дослі­дження показали, що в своїй книзі автор використав питання конфронтації молодого віку із старістю. Під час аналізу нами було встановлено, що Намір! повторює схеми масової куль­тури та показує виразну схильність автора до девальвації літніх людей. Наше дослідження показало, однак, певну зміну в підході до проблеми старості, а саме, що зміна зневаги на ставлення з повагою до літніх людей пов’язана із рівністю всіх людей перед обличчям не­минучої смерті.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Stig Welinder

Prehistoric people sometimes died at an old age to judge by the longevity of life estimated from skeletal data. Anthropology, however, suggests that old age is a much more complex concept than that. The process of growing old that is stressed in the anthropological theory of old people may advantageously be discussed on the basis of prehistoric burial-ground data. Examples from Swedish burial-grounds hint at a cultural variation in the way in which prehistoric societies viewed old age.


2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-50
Author(s):  
Ana Maya Goto Uyehara

At the end of XX century, the old age theme has been approached due to concern of the society with the quality of man’s life in the aging process and the fact of seniors correspond to a growing representative portion of the population in the quantitative point of view. So the aging changes in a problem that wins expressiveness and legitimacy in the field of the daily current concerns. This article intends to demonstrate that the work can articulate other life projects for the seniors and to avoid psychic pathologies in the old age that can appear due to the loss of personal identity, to the involvement lack in motivated activities or starting from the adoption of inadequate consumption ways or lifestyles. For this, this article assumes a line of preventive character explanation under two slopes: the first refers to the fact that, if the work ennobles the man, he must acquire or improve this individual competences, adapting them to the new demands of the job market to get a job, or even to reactivate his professional life because new life projects. The second slope follows the direction of the discovery of the seniors’ potentialities for the companies, which can adapt the qualities [and limitations] of this workers category to the various functions in the organization. The Brazilian entrepreneur needs to be attentive to the image of his company and the differential competitive that can distinguish it of the other companies. And this can be to employee senior people or to maintenance it in the company personnel staff.


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