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George Saunders’ “The New Mecca”: The Gap between Reality and Conceptuality

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George Saunders’ “The New Mecca”: The Gap between Reality and Conceptuality
Tasfia Kamal 11/21/13
Professor Walker Communication Skills George Saunders’ “The New Mecca”: The Gap between Reality and Conceptuality “The New Mecca” is an essay in which author George Saunders engraves different experiences he had throughout his Dubai trip. In the beginning he tells the readers that everything they are going to assume about Dubai is going to be wrong unless they see Dubai by themselves first. He admits falling in love with everything he perceived in Dubai even the hotels. As he continued talking about Dubai, he introduced the reader with the history of Dubai. He informs that few years ago there was only sand. Dubai has improved a lot in a very short amount of time. He gets amazed at the beauty of Dubai; however, he gets surprised twice the amount of that because of the difference between the reality of Dubai and what people think about Dubai. The author mentions numerous examples where he meets lower class working people and sees them suffering. However, he realizes that those lower class working people don’t apprehend that. They think they are lucky enough to stay in Dubai. The author finds this gap between what these people think is happening and what’s happening in reality which makes him feel helpless and miserable. He expresses the urge of helping them in his essay; still ends up not doing it because according to him it’s not his job to fix it. The author starts his essay with what people think Dubai is. As he moves forward he talks about what the reality is behind all these misapprehensions. By the end of the essay he concedes that everyone has been victimized by this fallacy. The main focus of this essay is the

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