Another Earth

The part that I want to focus on is when John, after hearing that Rhoda submitted an essay to go to Earth II, told Rhoda Plato’s anecdote of people in the cave. He said that when the man who saw the outside world came back and told the other men what he has seen, he was stoned to death. This story relates the two character’s attitude towards truth. Rhoda, who sympathizes for the man who has seen the real world, is an advocate of truth. She is willing to pursue the unknown, and came to John’s house to reveal something that might get her hurt.

John symbolically represents the men who would kill the man who tells the truth. He is sheltered from the perpetrator of the accident because of the coma and he is not ready to know that Rhoda, a girl he falls for, is the person that killed all his family. Like the men who violently react to the man who sees the real world, John almost chokes Rhoda to death when he realizes that she is the “stupid teenager” that caused the accident. John says “maybe they are not ready to know the truth;” he certainly is not. When John accepts the ticket to the other Earth, I think it symbolically represents him finally accepting all the truth of the night of the accident, not being left in the dark any longer. As John argues it is a stupid idea to go to the other Earth because people are not ready for the truth, by agreeing to go to the place that represents “the real world” in Plato’s anecdote, John is telling that he is ready to accept everything.

The fact that he went to the other Earth instead of Rhoda makes him the advocate for truth, and maybe the ending could also be interpreted as the other John, like the other people on the cave, not ready for the truth therefore not coming to earth even when he was offered.

Bridesicle, by Will McIntosh

“He told Mira he would see her on Tuesday, and killed her.” [p. 9]

The fact that the author deliberately uses the word “kill” raises couple of issues that leaves me uncomfortable. First, the helplessness of the women in these situations in Bridesicle when they are repeatedly killed until they meet a sponsor willing to pay their body reminds me of a brothel where the prostitutes were ransomed to be bought as concubines. The fact that such establishment has developed seem to reflect on the continuing decline for honoring life as medical technology advances. The lives of these women are seen as commodity, and they become a trophy wife to someone who is able to pay for their body; it seems unlikely that love will actually develop in this atmosphere. Then what happens to unattractive women who would not appeal to anyone? Do they just get discarded and sent to “die?” Second, the word invokes a violent image of murder. People, at least at the Bridesicle establishment, take life so lightly because they can easily revive the dead. They don’t think about the fact that they are killing someone because that someone can easily be revived. Third is the question of what is worse, being dead or staying alive in spirit only inhabiting someone else’s body without being able to do anything according to my ideas? Isn’t the process of being revived due to the dating services more horrid since if one is dead, they do not comprehend that stage as being bad? It is only by returning to the land of living that Mira dreads returning to the state of nothingness but once she is in it, she does not feel anything.

The novel makes me think about what the meaning of life and death are. The hitchers that live within someone else have a body that is physically dead, but they are not considered dead. Are we alive because of our physical body or because of or mental capacity, something that makes us who we are? The story seems to imply that our life comes from our non-physical attributes such as memory and personality, yet puts a heavy emphasis on the importance of the body by showing the desperation of the women to stay alive (or return from the dead).

The Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang II

“don’t ask me to explain it” p. 130 and 172

This line is the first line when I thought that this whole story is a simultaneous thought process. Actually, not just a simultaneous thought process, but like a semagram with each of the anecdotes acting as small characters. This effectively shows the narrators ability to think simultaneously. Until this point, I thought that the story of the daughter had direct correlation to the story of the heptapods that directly precedes or follows the story of the daughter. However the two stories, the story of Nelson and her daughter, and the story of Colonel Weber are both similar stories where the players knowingly or not, participate in this play that becomes the “private joke” of the knower. The stories are so far away from each other that they seem unrelated, but they are definitely connected to each other. I think similarly, each story is connected to something else, placed in random formation like Heptapod B; like the whole story is one huge semagram- each story being “characters”, the connecting stories as “sentences”, and this whole story like a “paragraph.”

The quote also represents the narrators view on her new found knowledge, the future. She cannot explain it to anyone what happens because it is like her private joke. It is like how the readers of the “Book of Ages” cannot tell other people that they have read it, because then it becomes a paradox, or the private joke would no longer be there. Her simultaneous existence also reminds me of Orr. I’m worried that the narrator would confuse herself with the memory of past, future, and present existing all at once just like how Orr had all the memories of different realities in his head. I guess it is a story that she would have to keep a secret not only because it violates the rule of thumb[you cannot reveal the Book of Ages!!] but because she can be perceived as mentally ill or used with malicious intent.

Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang

“I’d love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you’re conceived, but the right time to do that would be when you’re ready to have children of your own, and we’ll never get that chance.” [p. 1]

The beginning of the story sets up the narrative style, first person perspective of a mother telling a story. The way the story is written is as if she is telling a bedtime story to her daughter, or on a deathbed. The title of the story, “Story of Your Life,” and the way the narrator starts with the story of the day her daughter was conceived, I think implies that this story somehow relates to the story of the narrator’s daughter in the narrator’s perspective, although I have no idea how that actually will work out except when the narrator is telling stories of her life before the aliens visited. Initially I thought that the narrator has already died or was dying, but it seems that it was the daughter who died-from the passage later when the narrator talks about saying “that’s her” at a suspiciously hospital like setting. I somehow get the feeling that the daughter was somehow killed in an accident/incident involving the aliens, but maybe the “you” of the “Story of Your Life” has nothing to do with the daughter.

Another narrating style that interests me is the way the narrator alternates stories between the story of her daughter and the story of her encounter with the aliens. The only correlation between the two alternating story seems to be the way they use language. We can see the daughter speaking and the mother figuring out what she means through context, such as the “made of honor” while also figuring out the alien language through context, such finding out their written structure. Perhaps the “you” in the title is both the daughter and the aliens, hence the alternating narrative style.

Blood Child, by Octavia Butler

“You’re better,” she said this time, probing me with six or seven of her limbs. “You’re gaining weight finally. Thinness is dangerous.” The probing changed subtly, became a series of caresses. / “He’s still too thin,” my mother said sharply. [p. 4]

I can’t help but to relate this conversation with Hansel and Gretel when the witch checks how much Hansel gained weight every day to gauge when she should eat him and Hansel deceives the witch by giving her a bone, making her think that he is too thin. Not to mention, even if I did not know the specifics of the Tlic/Terran dynamic, I caught on that there was something almost master/slave like in the relationship between the humans and the Tlic-largely due to several implications such as impatient Tlic wanting teenage Terran, “sell,” and “family.” The fact that T’Gatoi wants her human to be healthy implies that this “something” is something physical, which later the readers find out that it is in the form of “pregnancy.”

I think the fact that Gan’s mother “sharply” retorts to T’Gatoi also emphasize that perhaps what T’Gatoi want when Gan is healthy, may not particularly be desirable. Gan’s mother is quick to defend him, probably wanting to push the date as late as possible so that Gan is not taken away. I guess the reason why my mind jumped to the witch in Hansel and Gretel is because of the mother’s words, “He’s too thin.” Maybe my mind is just gruesome, going straight from “He’s too thin” to “He’s too thin to eat.”

I now catch that there is also something, predator-like or sexual about the way T’Gatoi handles Gan. T’Gatoi, touches Gan that “bec[omes] a series of caresses,” there is something sensual about this if I think about how they are going to be, in really twisted way, husband and wife-ish, but then again, I just can’t let go of the image of a predator, satisfied with how her prey is fattening up. It could be in her nature, considering that she could have, as a worm, eaten Gan’s father. This novel is just generally too disturbing.

Hijab Scene #7... oops

The last couple of lines of the Hijab Scene #7, “Yes, I carry explosives/They’re called words/and if you don’t get up/off your assumptions,/They’re going to blow you away,” reflects the narrator as an intellectual woman with power in her words, who is ready to show the person she is talking to that she is not like the stereotype constructed around the women wearing a hijab. The last line of the poem, “They’re going to blow you away” shows that there is going to be an element of surprise of finding what they do not expect to the extreme if the person don’t “get up/off your assumptions,” as she is able to change what he/she thinks completely, as implied by the words “blow you away.” The speaker is confident that she can throw away all that preconception with the power of her words. The implication of these lines is that despite what people assume about her as a woman wearing a hijab, her words are powerful, and capable of completely changing the perspective.

The Lathe of Heaven, By Ursula K. Le Guin II

He seemed to recoil, as a man might who thought to push aside a gauze curtain and found it to be a granite door. [p. 145]

This is not the first time that Orr has been described as solid. The first one to observe so is Heather, earlier when she sees Orr in her office. The fact that Orr is described as a rock is so interesting.  Unrelenting force, an obstacle, symbol of something eternal, nature, calamity, common place, and not opinionated are just few of the descriptions I would use for rocks and they all seem to fit Orr well. It reminds me of what somebody said about Orr, being a possible play on words for ore, a rock containing minerals, normal on the outside, but special within. I mean, Orr is often portrayed as being more solid, more strength than originally perceived. The novel slowly changed out of perspective of predator/prey relationship since Orr started to make his stand known. This is a crucial moment of the story because we finally see Orr say no! Yay! Again, Orr is portrayed as a great obstacle in this case, or an unexpected weight. It is kind of like how Haber did not expect Orr to have such a strong opinion against the use of the e-state to change the world. Actually, this all reminds me of another Taoist perspective of water. Water can be perceived as weak, malleable to any form, but has the power to carve rocks. Orr, though he has dutifully following Haber’s instructions and perceived as prey multiple times in the novel, is able to find within himself to stop Haber, give him advice to stop himself, in the end. Actually it is scary how much Taoist ideas are immersed in this novel. Slightly off topic, but according to Lao Tsu, a wise man knows that sickness will turn him sick before he actually gets sick, kind of like Orr who knew this was all wrong from the start while Haber had to, in the end, go cuckoo. But anyhow, this all shows Orr’s amazing prowess! I am rather proud of him to finally emerge out of his panicked shell and showing his calm, serene self that believes in “self is universe”