More so than often elderly people fall victim to abuse. Different forms of abuse, such as psychological abuse, physical abuse, and financial exploitation, ultimately lead to the marginalization of elderly people. According to the government of Canada, an estimated 4-10% of Canadian seniors face a form of elderly abuse. Statistics similar to these ^depict^ that a barrier to equality exists which needs to be broken down. In “Miss Brill”, the protagonist allows her abuser to recklessly construct her reality. His snide, thoughtless remark shattered the reality she had been happily and harmlessly creating. He rhetorically questioned why Miss Brill doesn’t just leave her “silly old mug at home”. These words deeply affected her and essentially pushed her to the edge of society. Instead of interacting with the society as she had done every Sunday, she retreated to her “dark little room” and isolated herself from the outer world. His words made her negatively re-evaluate her sense of identity and self-worth. As seen in Miss Brill’s case, marginalization can occur unintentionally and in simplistic ways.
The groups of homeless and mentally and socially challenged are very susceptible to the constructed propriety built by society. Many negative social attitudes exist towards those who are mentally and socially challenged and especially to those who are homeless. Homeless people are very often looked down upon. The homelessness issue is usually blamed on the homeless people themselves, for getting themselves into their situation. Additionally, society often dismisses them as drug addicts. Although true for some cases, in others it is uncontrollable as depicted in the story “The Safehouse”. The protagonist appears to have a number of problems working against him. His primary problem is that he’s homeless. As a result, his social skills have been damaged, his motivation has been diminished, and his mental state has been dulled as if from disuse. This could have been prevented if he was properly integrated into society. It has become a common social attitude to feel sorry for these types of people, but these people aren’t seeing them as equals. Essentially, the safehouse is just encouraging this marginalization. It’s not helping these “lost souls” integrate into society, it’s further isolating them. The shirts these people wear aid the majority in better identifying which pushes them to the edges of society. The system they have for the people who are similar to the protagonist is unrighteous; society is limiting their opportunities and quality of life. They are seen as inferior simply because of their financial state, and mental or social issues. Essentially, the motive for places like the safehouse are to ^further^ separate society from the oppressed. The safehouse is merely grouping these types of people together, so society can isolate them more efficiently.
