ation as the state that exists when things that should
naturally go together are kept apart. Modern work,
Marx argued, does this in many ways. The Industrial
Revolution created workers who were alienated from
their own essential humanity, because they were
treated as “machines” as opposed to human beings.
Further, they are alienated from one another because
there is no social relationship involved in the pro-
duction of a commodity. They are also alienated
from the product they are producing, because it will
be sold on the market with no relationship to the
human that produced it, and from the act of work
itself, because there is no satisfaction or meeting
of desire involved. Preindustrial work did not have
these attributes, as work was often performed in a
family setting, with tangible results and, for many, a
clear sense of pride and satisfaction. For Marx, and
for many other philosophers of alienation, the far-
ther society moves away from these more “natural”
states, the more alienated we will become.
See also Albee, Edward; who’s aFraid oF vir-
Ginia wooLF?; Bradbury, Ray: Martian chroni-
cLes, the; Carver Raymond: “Cathedral”; Dos
Passos, John: u.s.a. trilogy; Fitzgerald, F.
Scott: tender is the niGht; Gaines, Ernest J.:
Lesson beFore dyinG, a; Hesse, Herman: step-
penwoLF; Kushner, Tony: anGeLs in aMerica;
McCullers, Carson: heart is a LoneLy hunter,
the; Miller, Arthur: crucibLe, the; Moma-
day, N. Scott: house Made oF dawn; O’Neill,
Eugene: iceMan coMeth, the; Shakespeare,
William: teMpest, the; Toumer, Jean: cane.
FURTHER READING
Khan, Nasir. Development of the Concept and Theory of
Alienation in Marx’s Writings. Oslo, Norway: Solum
Forlag, 1995.
King James Bible Online. Available online. URL:
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org. Accessed
January 22, 2010.
Schacht, Richard. Alienation. New York: Doubleday,
1970.
Stearns, Peter. From Alienation to Addiction: Modern
American Work in a Global Historical Perspective.
Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm, 2008.
Jennifer McClinton-Temple
ambition
“Ambition” is a difficult trait to pin down because it
is so human: On the one hand, we want to reward
ambition, yet on the other hand, we want to warn
against it. Literature, especially, has taken the lat-
ter interesting approach to examining ambition;
however, the term itself was originally relatively
neutral, coming from the Latin ambito or ambitus,
meaning “going around, circuit, edge, border.” Ini-
tially, this referred to a “going around” in the early
Roman republic as a means of collecting votes or of
canvassing for various political positions. Over time,
however, the word ambition would take on other
connotations, such as when the Roman poet Lucre-
tius stated, “Angustum per iter luctantes ambitionis,”
referring to ambitious men who were “struggling to
press through the narrow way of ambition,” usually
in a desire for honor, popularity, and power. It is
perhaps because of these very human qualities—to
desire love, honor, knowledge, and power—that the
theme of ambition has been so prevalent in litera-
ture. Whether in Greek mythology or a 20th-cen-
tury novel such as Chinua Achebe’s thinGs FaLL
apart, literature often highlights the consequences
of ambition gone awry.
The dangers of ambition have been a popular
theme not only in literature, but also through reli-
gious and mythological texts. In the book of Genesis
in the Old Testament, for example, ambition is given
much attention. The earliest consequence of ambi-
tion occurred when Adam and Eve decided to eat
the fruit from the tree of knowledge, so that their
“eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, know-
ing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5), even though God had
warned them that they would die if they ate of the
tree. The result of such ambition? Adam and Eve
were granted knowledge, but they were banished
from the Garden of Eden. Later in Genesis, ambi-
tion is once again punished when the Tower of Babel
is constructed, so that the people may “build us a city
and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and
let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad
upon the face of the whole earth” (11:4). The result
of the Babylonians’ ambition was exactly what they
had built the tower to defend against: God causes
them to speak in different languages and to be scat-
tered across the land, resulting in confusion.ambition 5