Thursday, April 5, 2012

We #2

As for motifs colors don't seem to be as big in the book anymore. D-503 still uses the color pink when describing things but its not as often as in the first third of the book. I feel like this is disappointing and I don't quite understand why the author used the colors so much in the last part of the book. Something that did stay constant but changed a little was D-503 face description. In the first third he talked about lips and eyes being like scissors and at one point he said that a smile looked like a parabola, I believe. In the second third of the book, he still writes about peoples faces or facial expression but now he seems to notice that behind peoples facial expressions there are feelings. This contradicts with the first third because he would just describe faces using mathematical concepts or language. Which is very logical and now its more of an emotional description. As for the rest of the motifs, glass still seems to be the way in which the government keeps everyone in check. "something infinitely huge and at the same time infinitely small,the square root of negative one" .The imaginary number of the square root of negative one shows up again. It seems like this imaginary number has  a direct relationship to the soul and what it is. A big part of it is imagination. This also ties in with D-503 having dreams at night which the One State makes them believe is an illness.
The green wall is part of setting but might be able to be a possible motif as well. It is the line that keeps out nature which most people in this society are not too fond of. They make fun of the ancients for thinking so much of nature while they find it somewhat repulsive. D-503 has not expressed nature in a positive way so far. He almost seems disgusted by it. He thinks that it keeps the "irrational, hideous world of trees, birds, animals" out of their "perfect" society.
Language: I think that in this part of the book we can see D-503 and his internal conflict even more. He still has what at this time he considers to be a "disease" of the soul and an imagination. He keeps having dreams and keeps describing himself as "the real me" and the "new me". He is aware that he has two sides to him, the new one being the one with an imagination and the old one which is the one that is a loyal citizen to his government. He often uses metaphors and similes to get his points across and tries to connect it back to the reader. Something that our group noticed during our discussion was the fact that D-503 seems to lose his thoughts more often in this part of the book, so it is a little more confusing trying to follow with whatever his intentions were. Before it seemed like he was aware of what he was going to write but its more like, "And then..." Then he'll start a new entry or keep going but won't explain his previous journal.

No comments:

Post a Comment