Pride And Prejudice By Jane Austen

Jane Austen has said that “To wish [is] to hope, and to hope [is] to expect”. When fleeing from their country’s economic insecurity, political upheaval, or in some cases, violence, migrants are driven by their wish for a better, more secure life. However, the sense of hope bred from the victorious escape of such dire circumstances can lead to false expectations regarding the perceived abundance that awaits them in the west. It is these expectations that ultimately lead to a strong sense of discouragement among migrant populations, as the one thing onto which they have clung as a source of hope amidst their misfortune, is ripped from their grasp and fervently disproved. The discrepancy between migrants’ expectation regarding life in their new

The incentives that motivate people to leave everything they have known behind are often perceived to be vastly diverse. However, It is inaccurate to say that all migrants depart their homes for vastly different reasons. Realistically, their departure inherently stems from a belief that a more opportunistic and hopeful life exists elsewhere. This can either be manifested through emphasis on fleeing the troubled homeland, or emphasis on the promise of their new life abroad. Azel, a poor Moroccan man hungry to leave his country, perceived leaving as “an obsession, a kind of madness that ate him day and night: how could he get out, how could he escape this humiliation?” (15, LT). In contrast, as Ifemelu, a middleclass Nigerian woman, prepared to depart, “[her] mother said Jesus told her in a dream that Ifemelu would prosper in America” (123, A). It can be conjectured that the protagonist who focuses on simply fleeing their current situation out of desperation will be more content with their new life abroad than the character who actively

After investing so much of their money, effort, and soul into their departure, it is next to impossible for them to simply relinquish the idealistic sense of hope that has kept them going amongst trauma and discomfort. Instead, they purposefully seek out things that may confirm their initial bias, often waiting great lengths of time for these things to arrive: “That first summer was Ifemelu’s summer of waiting; the real America, she felt, was just around the next corner she would turn.” (136, A). This remedying of cognitive dissonance leads to tightly cling to their dreams of the ‘real’ America in order to find some sense of confirmation that moving away from their home country was the right thing to do. From a literary standpoint, the migrant’s cognitive inconsistency between expectation and reality is the main contributor to the central conflict within the narrative. When Ifemelu moves to America and Azel moves to Spain, they are faced with unanticipated struggles that shake the foundations upon which they have built their identities back in their home countries. For example, Ifemelu has to deal with the notion of bearing a black identity for the first time. Hearing stories of the individual freedom existing abroad whilst still in Nigeria, she did not anticipate the systematic discrimination that she would face upon arrival in