Successful Ageing, Love and Renewal in Love in the Time of Cholera and this Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism

Abstract

Ageism refers to institutional and personal discrimination against people solely on the basis of their age. This is being done through language, media representations, workplace structures and even internalized self- perception. This paper attempts to examine the representation of ageing through the select works Ashton Applewhite’s This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto against Ageism and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. Both these narratives challenge the internalized beliefs perpetuated about old age as a period of decline, dependency and diminished value. Socially constructed ideas regarding old age are being challenged through Ashton Applewhite’s This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto against Ageism. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez challenges the notion that love and passion are emotions that belong exclusively to youth.  The works selected for discussion present ageing as a period of renewal and growth. Decline-based models of ageing are challenged through these narratives and they encourage readers to view ageing not as a period of erosion but as evolution. Transformative potential of old age is being highlighted through the narratives selected for discussion.