Flatland
By: Jack • Essay • 1,021 Words • January 11, 2010 • 971 Views
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Flatland is a two dimensional plane. They have a very strict class system and are very society and class based. The lowest class are the women who are strait lines. They aren't allowed to be educated and the men talk to them differently then they would talk to each other because they are considered stupid for having so much emotion and being so concerned for others. The women are also forced to keep up a constant peace cry in public because they are strait lines if you only see their point, or front, then they are practically invisible. They are considered frail and things but are actually feared because they could kill a man easily since they are so pointed but in doing so they might also kill them selves. The second lowest class are the soldiers who are isocolese triangles. Their points are so sharp that they are very dangerous to anger and are also very large in number. The third class are the equilateral triangles, the merchants. Then there are the squares and the five sided pentagons, who are the professional me and gentlemen, or lawyers. After that there are the nobility who are the six sided figures and up. Then the priests are the highest rank in flat land. They are the circles who make all the laws and enforce them. They are also the most learned class and are very wise.
When the narrator visit's the three dement ional space he is overwhelmed. His guide, a sphere, had given up trying to explain to him in words what three demotions was like. The narrator considered the sphere as a god since he was able to see so much and knew so much more that the circles in flatland. The sphere showed the narrator how from space you could see inside of everything in flatland and take anything that before they had considered to be locked. The sphere also showed him what a cube was and how the irregulars they had always condemned were actually solids. He showed the narrator about shading and light and how a cube has six planes connected at eight points. And how in the sphere's world the women that Flatland had always discriminated against were actually a fundamental in their world. Then the sphere showed him his fate in flatland by having the narrator listen in on the circles secret meeting that they have every 1000 years. The narrator watched his brother get put in jail for knowing how every thousand years a prophecy is made by some one in Flatland about a third dement ion. After that the narrator kept asking questions of the sphere about a forth dement ion. The sphere didn't believe there was one but the narrator did because he had just been proved to that there was a third dement ion and doesn't understand how if there is a third dement ion there can't be a forth dement ion.
I don't think the inhabitants of Flatland can accept the news of a third dement ion because to them it is incomprehensible without being shown. Plus it would go against all their classes, society, and discrimination that they had been taught. I also don't think they can understand it because you can't describe it in words as we were shown in the book when the narrator was trying to describe Flatland to the king of Lineland and when the sphere was trying to explain the third dement ion to the narrator. They also can't imagine such