Word Count: 1484
The Symbol of The Looking-Glass Self in Eduardo Galeano’s Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World
First World, Second World, Third World. Three separate statements. Three separate lives yet lives that exist on the same earth. These terms refer to the earth after World War II when the world itself split into two geopolitical blocs and spheres of influence with differentiating views on governmental practices and views of what society should be. The Allies made up the First World, including the United States, Western Europe, Japan and Australia, capitalist countries in contrary to the communists that make up the Second World (Russia, Eastern Europe and some of the Turk States as well as China). As far as the Third World goes they are everyone else. Third World are individuals who are impoverished, unadvanced savages. To the other two, they do not exist. One problem with human thinking is that we are constantly limiting ourselves with compartmentalizations and in his novel Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World, Eduardo Galeano deems the First World as the “upside down world”. In his book he criticizes the world today as being a civilization gone
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By inserting the idea of the “Looking Glass-Self” it magnifies society 's influence on our perception of other people as well as ourselves. Galeano does not use this term specifically but it correlates with his writing. The society that is set up today can be described as mirrors that reflect off each other. In other words people look to others to determine who we are rather than looking in themselves. So people imagine what judgements are being made about them, and they imagine how they appear in the minds of others. It is a huge web of mirrors reflecting off one another and ultimately these reflections change behavior, consequently for the