Illusion of Media in Timothy Mo’s The Redundancy of Courage

Abstract

The concept of reality is an issue that has intrigued the minds of people throughout centuries. Since it is possible to perceive the world around us depending on various perspectives, it turns out to be a rather conspicuous topic. This multiplicity of perspectives takes the issue to a further point in which realities are intermingled with illusions; that is to say, it becomes difficult to differentiate illusion from the real. While realities are accepted to be existing as long as they are perceived through the sensory organs in an objective way, illusions are merely the uncorroborated beliefs or assumptions. In other words, illusions are one way of creating false realities. Since fictitious narration also embodies the features of illusion and does not have to be based on factual data, an abundancy of illusions is applied by literary people in their works. However, when it comes to the illusions in real life, media tools are to be scrutinized because creating illusions is one way of manipulating the actual events, something frequently used in representations of media. Media, whose popularity has increased in accordance with the high use of technology in modern times, presents the incidents happening outside people’s own world. At times, it is the best way to keep up with the rest of the world. However, the contingencies of interpreting an event put the reliability of media into question. Within this framework, the aim of this paper is to examine Timothy Mo’s novel, Redundancy of Courage, in terms of the illusions created by the media tools. The use of media in the plot structure of the novel is aimed to be discussed in detail and explained through the examples from the novel.

Keywords

• media
• illusion
• manipulation
• Redundancy of Courage
• Timothy Mo

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