expect them to be able to cope with all the lessons to get a considerably high rank. Sarah is able to cope will all lessons being taught at school. She gets good grades
and a high rank. She is involved in the students with highest ranks. Yet, as a teenager, the role of this good and bright students has brought her into a social
alienation at school. She is estranged from the rest of the students with abilities lower than hers. Hence, she is not able to befriend and put herself into the teenage
friendship. She is then described as a bright student who is too weird to talk to. This social role strain eventually brings a sense of alienation for her during the school
years. Sarah’s social isolation at school that has made her time at school very
difficult keeps her “counting down the months to graduation” Albom, 2013:131, the time when she is going to be free from all senses of inferiorities she has long
been feeling. Sarah starts to hope that time can be either faster or cut off. She wants to die soon, as she feels she does not have any reasons to stay alive.
All these sense of inferiority, isolation, and role strain affects Sarah’s way of thinking. For her, having a boyfriend is the last thing in her mind. Unexpectedly,
though, she accidentally meets a good-looking boy while doing her essay on “an influential community experience” by voluntarily servicing people at a homeless
shelter as one of her college application requirements. The eighteen-year-old boy’s name is Ethan, whose job is to deliver food supply to the shelter on Saturdays. He
is her senior at school, who—unlike her—is popular among boys and girls. Ethan once unintentionally greeted her on the day they first met. Yet, for Sarah, this
“hello” is something she is unable to get rid of her mind afterwards. This short
notice from Ethan has made her “visible” and “wanted”, according to Sarah. Ethan’s way of addressing her using the word “Lemon-ade” is also a thing making Sarah
Lemon feel special. For Sarah, Ethan has been her “new world”, where she is the center of attention, who is fully wanted and put into account. Sarah starts to live in
her own world, believing that she does not need anyone else other than Ethan. Sarah began to view Ethan as her destiny, the way young girls often do with
young boys. Far from school and its written rules of who can talk to whom, she had more confidence, she stood up straighter, she left behind the social
network T-shirts she sometimes wore in favor of lower-cut, more feminine tops, and she would blush when Ethan said, “Nice look today, Lemon-ade.”
Albom, 2013:51
Carl E. Pickhardt in “Adolescence and Falling in Love” states that it is common for teenagers in high school to alienate themselves from their surrounding when
realizing they are falling in love. In fact, they have fallen into a depth of caring, which is more complex and compelling than what they have ever been experiencing
before. When teenagers like Sarah Lemon falls in love, they tend to think that the person they fall in love with is the one they are going to spend the life with. Hence,
these in-love adolescence tend to draw themselves from their former life and world, and focus only to the person they are falling in love with. In Sarah’s experience,
falling in love has made her a person which is alienated from her true self. She starts to stop liking what she favors and start to pay attention to what Ethan “might” like.
She does many things making her feel awkward, but hangs on to the belief that Ethan might like it. She is doing many things, but is alienated from the things which
are purposeless for herself. Her adolescence love for Ethan makes her think that “If she wanted him, she had to change some habits” Albom, 2013:83.
Ethan’s presence in Sarah Lemon’s life has somehow change her way of perceiving time. She does not care about school time any longer. Instead, she is
concerned about the time afterwards, when she will be able to see Ethan. His existence is also able to make her put her difficult school-life aside. She even “cut
her last two classes”, thinking that Ethan might require time to be together with her, so she’ll need to give it to him Albom, 2013:135. Having Ethan as her “boyfriend”
has made the alienated Sarah Lemon, who often felt desperate when spending her days at school, a girl who hopes the time to be prolonged. She needs more time, as
she feels “the time flies” when she is with him Albom, 2013:136. She wants the time to be stopped, so that she can be with Ethan for as long as she wants. It is thus
not surprising that when Ethan puts her down and starts to pull himself away, time starts to grow longer once again for Sarah Lemon. The teenage girl who once hoped
the time to stop, so that she can spend the time with her first adolescent love, now wants to commit suicide—ending the rest of the time she has using her own way.
Since Ethan is “her destiny”, having him away from her life is the most difficult event to deal with, that she thinks death is much simpler and easier.
According to Milton A. Gonsalves in Right and Reason, Sarah Lemon’s suicide is based on the thought shared by those having severe problems in certain
communities or in a bigger scope, the society. This teenage girl assumes her life as something bitter, from which she found no reasonable way outs. Sarah Lemon
realizes that no one in her life really “sees” her appropriately, even Ethan, whom she adores too much. When falling in love with the boy, Sarah once had a thought
that she is not invisible—proven by Ethan’s presence in her days—and life.
However, this thought ended when she finally learned that Ethan never had the same feeling with her, leading her into desperation and worse feeling of rejection and
isolation. As a smart and bright student, this rejection raises a question within Sarah’s mind—whether she really deserves to be treated that way, despite all efforts
and achievements she has got. When in such condition, according to Gonsalves, a person may make a suicidal decision to preserve dignity and self-mastery by ending
his or her life at the moment when all life’s worth and meaning are exhausted 1986:245.
She also decides to shorten—or more likely, stop her God-given time on earth as a reaction to the thought “why not kill ourselves when we have become our
own greatest enemy?” as also stated by Gonsalves 1986:245. Sarah perceived herself as an outsider, which her surrounding refuses to accept. Despite her efforts
to make herself a better one, she keeps failing. In the end, she was unable to find anything valuable inside her, that she decided to end all the miseries by shutting
down her life by ending the time she had left in her own authority.
2. Victor Delamonte
Victor Delamonte is a successful businessman who is the fourteenth-richest man in the world. In 1965, when he was forty one years old, he was married to
Grace who, at that time, worked in his firm as a bookkeeper. Now, in his eighty- sixth age, he finds out that he has a tumor near his liver and kidney failure. The
doctor has already told him a couple of months he has left. Knowing that, he does not give up easily. He will lose if death takes his life. Then he gets the answer of
immortality through cryonics, a sophisticated technique of freezing dying bodies
contaminated by incurable diseases so that those bodies can be cured in the future where the advanced medication of the diseases has been found.
Victor has been an orphan since he was nine. His father, who was a plumber, was involved in a fight that took place in a seaside tavern. He was killed there. After
a few days, his mother committed suicide by jumping off from the bridge. To save his future, he was transported to his uncle in America. In the boat, he learned
something important after his food supplies thrown away to the water by some hooligan kids.
He cried that night for all that that he had lost, but he would say it taught him a valuable lesson: that holding on to things “will only break your heart.”
So he avoided attachments, which served him well during his financial ascent Albom, 2013:53.
Therefore, one of his characteristics is not easily attached to something. He knows when is the right time to let go of something before it is too late because it will only
break his heart. And as quoted above, this characteristic is one of the reasons why he can be top businessman in the world by selling old things and investing on the
new ones. Not only his father suicide makes Victor a let-go person, but it also trigger a sense of alienation in him. Victor is working very hard to make his life
decent and prosperous. He would do the best attempts to seek for the best results in the workplace—his business. Not surprisingly, he sees other businessmen as his
competitors, as stated by Karl Max in one of the characteristic of an alienated modern man—they tend to be alienated from other human beings.
But just as competition between businesses brings down the price of commodities, competition between workers brings down wages. This is not
only materially damaging to workers, it estranges them from each other. Humans are free beings and are able to not only transform the world
themselves, but to cooperate in order to transform the world in more
sophisticated and helpful ways. As such, they should see each other as allies, especially in the face of a capitalist class who seeks to undermine worker
solidarity for its own benefit. But under capitalism workers see each other as opposing competition qtd.in Karp and Yoels, 1986:200.
Victor Delamonte is not only wealthy, but also clever and idealistic. Albom states that Victor’s cleverness make him a good problem solver. He has broad
knowledge about many things and thus, is able to make proper decision for almost everything in the workplace. Being clever, he is able to rise to the top of the world.
He has succeeded in building his investment from an unknown company to the famous one since he has always find the answer from the problem his company
facing. Victor had always been to see a problem, find its weak spot, and crack it open.
Failing companies. Deregulation. Market swings. There was invariably hidden key; others were just missing it Albom, 2013:60.
However, his welfare and prosperity are not things he gains easily. Instead, he has to give some other things up to build his career paths. Just like some of successful
businessmen, Victor buries himself in his company 24 hours a day. As a result, he becomes a workaholic person. He changes from a loving husband to a serious one
as his company expands. Grace realizes this change. At first they did so much together—played tennis, visited museums, took trips
to Palm Beach, Buenos Aires, Rome. But as Victor’s business, their joint activities fell away. He began to travel alone, working on the plane and even
more at his destination Albom, 2013:54.
As a married couple, Victor and Grace has once experienced living happily as a small family, although they do not have any children. They spent their time mostly
together with laughs and smile. But as the company grows and the years passes, they both lose their connection as husband and wife. Victor, thus, is detached from
his own marriage and the only next of kin he has—his wife. Without even noticing,
Victor does not have enough time to be spent effectively with his wife at home. The last ten years of their marriage has been plain, tasteless, and cold. There is no home-
sweet-home after work, because home for Victor is merely a building—a place to be shifted with his precious office.
They shared coffee in the mornings and the occasional restaurant at night, but as the years passed and their wealth stacked like chips around them—multiple
homes, private jets—their life together felt more like a duty. The wife played her role, the husband did the same Albom, 2013:54.
As stated, Victor’s routine in the workplace has turned his personal life into a distant one. Unconsciously, he is detached from his own wife and thus, marriage. He is
alienated from both. Physically, he might be with his wife. He owns several homes—which are actually houses, instead of homes—and private jets he bought
for his wife. Ironically, he and Grace can hardly enjoy those classy things together. They both act as a husband and wife, but are not able to give the meaning of these
both roles. This is an irony, since Victor attempts to fight for all these possessions in search of happiness for Grace and himself. Yet, her hard work is the one making
Grace lonely and neglected. Despite all the plainness both Grace and Victor experience within the years
of being together, there is no one between them who has any intention of running away from the marriage they have built together. More less, this is affected by their
advanced age. This is confirmed by Gonsalves in his topic about marriage and divorce, that when married couple have reached advanced age, hardly any reason
could justify a separation 1986:319. When entering a married life, both Victor and Grace have encountered their
expectations on the marriage. While Victor struggles to bring Grace limitless
happiness with all their possessions and wealth, Grace tries to make Victor to understand and confirm her wish for having children from the marriage. Victor,
however, denies his wife’s wish, ensuring her that their wealth—the houses, the villas, and money are enough to bring them happiness children can do. As Victor
keeps getting busy with all his works and business, Grace is left alone in a marriage, which she feels to be plain day after day. Hence, although the two of them never
talk about divorce, their turned down wishes—Grace for the children, and Victor for Grace’s happiness from the possessions have made the marriage something both
of them can hardly cherish. Thus, the two are alienated from their own married lives.
As a workaholic man, Victor turns into a selfish person. He thinks of nothing else beside his work even though his marriage with Grace is at stake. They live in
a marriage without a child, yet it is merely Grace who always try to persuade Victor to start thinking about having kids around. Yet Victor, who is too busy working,
keeps avoiding this kind conversation which makes them talk less nowadays. Even though they have been married for forty-four years, “the last ten they’ve been more
like roommates” Albom, 2013:28. With money and power, Victor also becomes arrogant. He feels that he is a
really important person, a person that this world cannot lose. His pride as the fourteenth richest man in the world is the reason why he feels that way. The
arrogance of him leads to the paradigm that he will always be the winner. “Like other men of enormous power, Victor could not imagine the world without him. He
felt almost obligated to stay alive”. Albom, 2013:61.
