Nichols 1 Ashley Nichols Professor McFeaters ENG4815 6 December 2013
Thoughts of Humanity Vas: an Opera in Flatland, written by Steve Tomasula and designed by Stephen Farrell, is a physical manifestation of Square’s anxieties about his impending vasectomy. This novel is a hybrid of text and multimedia; it allows readers to literally read between the storyline. The physical novel is simultaneously Square’s book, his thoughts, and his research about humanity, eugenics, and etymology. Human beings, generally, tend to enlarge their personal issues by overthinking, overanalyzing, and often times over researching. It can be a way of coping with the issue, gaining more knowledge about it, or possibly obsessing over it as well. For Square, it would appear that all three of these are what is taking place in Vas over the concern of his vasectomy. Square recognizes that mostly, he was afraid of the unknown. He came to realize that “he was suffering from that genetic disease called middle age;” he was having a midlife crisis (Tomasula 180). Square, like most people, came to the notion that he was the only person experiencing these apprehensions which further extended his anxiety about the vasectomy. It caused him to dive head first into the origins of humanity; he was turning something common into something of an epic tragedy. By exploring where humans came from and what it really meant to be human caused Square to feel uneasy; he realized that to be a human is to pass on one’s genes via reproduction. Getting a vasectomy would completely eliminate that part of his humanity.
Nichols 2 Square’s journey through the internet led him through the rabbit hole of eugenics. He realized that they could be altered, changed and chosen and that “everyone who had the money (which is to say everyone who mattered) could direct their own personal evolution” (Tomasula 177). If choosing which genes one would pass on and which they would eliminate, brought Square to the question of whether or not it was natural. Society, as it usually does, created a stigma; Flatland had an unspoken standard of acceptance and those not fitting it where outcasts. Square’s recognition of this led him to the idea that “life is still a tragedy” (Tomasula 312). Vas is a manifestation of Square’s thoughts; it has a traditional storyline, but gives supplements of advertisements, internet sites, images, and sidebar notations that imply how Square is feeling. The actual story is just that, it never explicitly says how Square is processing it, but through the navigation of his collection and side-thoughts, the reader can immediately see his fear and anxiety. Vas begins with the opening lines of “first pain. Then knowledge” (Tomasula 9, 10). He was pained with the idea of getting a vasectomy, but it led him to knowledge about humanity. Square went through classic ideas that he was along, but researching and thinking led him to the realization that there were others who had gone through similar experiences. He was having to cut off his line of kin as did the Jews during the Holocaust or those who were forced into sterilization camps. By process of exploration about humanity, Square was able to come to the conclusion that his story was indeed “a common story. So common that many people wouldn’t even consider it a story” (Tomasula 18, 19). As Square resolves to go get the vasectomy, he is further assured that getting a vasectomy was quite common. The doctor reminded him of one of the “production-line workers who assemble jets” (Tomasula 367). Vas is literally Square’s story about navigation through an issue
Nichols 3 that leads him to humanity. He had taken for granted what it means to be human, but by experiencing the pressure and anxiety that go along with making a gene-altering and life-altering decision, Square was able to understand humanity. By the end of the novel he had found a sense of peace about getting the vasectomy. Whether he did it “for the good of the society” or just came to terms with his wife’s wishes, Square had taken a journey to knowledge (Tomasula 117). The interplay between multimedia and text reflects Square’s human feelings about making an epic, but also common decision.
Breaking Barriers Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson, defies that classicality of gender and sexuality in novels. There is almost always some sort of knowledge if a character in a novel is a man or a woman; genders tend to gear our brains in a certain stereotypical manner of reading. Without this gender knowledge, it becomes difficult to pass judgments and forces readers to rely solely on text and storyline. By avoiding giving the main character neither a name nor a gender, Winterson’s novel is defying traditional clichés that surround a stereotypical relationship. Winterson mentions several traditional romances and books to put into opposition of her own novel. She did this as an attempt to break down the barrier of traditional relationships. She even has the main character be in relationships with both sexes and people with very differing personas. This ongoing mystery of who exactly the author is causes readers to interpret the novel based solely on story and imagination. In a way, by not knowing the main character’s gender or name, it lets the reader use their imagination and question their own views on what a relationship is.
Nichols 4 This novel has a real place in the common day; with many debates about whether or not society should accept and allow gay or lesbian marriages, the novel forces one to look solely at the relationship. This novel is making readers question their view not just on relationships, but also on love. “It’s the clichés that cause the trouble,” because they set people up for stereotypical views of how society thinks love should be (Winterson 10, 70, 155, 189). This line is repeatedly seen throughout the novel, which amplifies the degradation that Winterson sees in stereotypical clichés about relationships. Throughout the novel, the main character is involved with many people-Inga, Jacqueline, a man, etc.-and until he or she meets Louise, does not recognize love in its true untainted form. The novel begins by posing a question, “why is the measure of love loss?”(Winterson 9). From the very beginning, the traditional view of love is challenged; do people not typically view love in a sappy romantic-comedy type of way? By comparing love to something of loss, refers it to sadness, pain, and bereavement, which is not entirely wrong. Winterson is showing that love can be sad, painful, and ensue feelings of bereavement, because for anyone who has ever been in a real relationship knows that life is magically always happy. Love is loss, because love can be lost. This notion is quite different from “love makes the world go round; love is blind” and “time’s a great healer” (Winterson 10). These are exactly the clichés that Winterson tears down. She tells a love story of an unnamed character who experiences real love. For him or her it was not something that could be healed; when he or she left Louise time did not heal their wounds. When the unnamed narrator leaves Louise, love is discovered; “If Louise is well then I am well” (Winterson 154). This idea of love being sacrificial is quite different from the clichés of
Nichols 5 love being “all you need” (Winterson 10). It reveals that love is thought of as typically selfserving, but this novel portrays that love is self-sacrificing. Through Winterson’s ambiguously gendered narrator, the common barriers of clichéd love and relationships are broken. It forces readers to discover what love really is without giving it a face or name. It portrays love as something real and tangible rather than fantastical, magical, or even perfect. This secrecy of gender presses the bounds of biased love, portraying it in its true fashion of being about the other person.
Create Your Own Texts for Nothing, by Samuel Beckett, is a novel that challenges classical narratives. The narrator has no known gender or name, leaving it entirely anonymous. Aside from that, Beckett also strays from coherent plot and setting. By alienating the reader from the organization of a traditional narrative, he or she is able to use Beckett’s words as filler for their own memories. He keeps language intact and his prose-like words give his novel a dreamlike quality that is easy for a reader to slip into it. Traditional novels provide expectant readers with all the tools necessary-character names, plot, setting, strict storyline, etc.-to inhibit their imagination. When reading these books, one only need to imagine images, but what Beckett is doing is simply creating a stage for one to input their own inner dreams and imaginations. There is “no point under such circumstances in saying I am somewhere else, someone else, such as I am I have all I need” (Beckett 116). A reader can delve into their own mind, but be guided by Beckett’s texts, not his made up story. Each section in Texts for Nothing represents a different platform of life. Instead of their being any coherent thread, they resemble life; life has no clear path and people do not experience the
Nichols 6 same things. By generalizing these moments in life, Beckett is making them much more accessible to his readers. For example, if he wrote a story about a princess and gave her and name and a dream, he has suddenly isolated the story to be relatable to a very small number of female individuals. Beckett’s ambiguity alienates the reader from novels of the norm, but it includes and allows them to fill in the missing pieces with their dreams, aspirations, and lives. It makes the experience of reading that more personal and intimate than books of classical construction. “Once there is speech” there is “no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life” (Beckett 116). He has given readers the things they need: speech, language, texts. Standard stories can be described as cookie-cutter and “ever since nothing but fantasies and hope of a story for me somehow;” Beckett has broken that mold and given books no other limitation except for language (Beckett 132). Cutting out the common building blocks make stories more personal, giving the reader the exact experience they desire. While Beckett does allude to some plotline scattered throughout Texts for Nothing, it is not enough that would create a conventional novel. Language is the basis of communication and understanding; without it the ability to express one’s desires, dreams, and memories would be difficult. Beckett provides his readers with texts and just like the title, they are ‘for nothing’ other than expression. The void of real characters, coherent plot, and generalized setting eliminates any real story from being read, but rather gives readers the opportunity to use their own memories and lives to fill in the blanks. It is a way of making the novel like a diary of sorts, revealing what is inside. These building blocks are nothing but a “minor point” (Beckett 139). The imagination and memories are all a reader needs to create a real story.
Nichols 7 Works Cited
Beckett, Samuel. Texts for Nothing. London: Calder & Boyars, 1974. Print. Tomasula, Steve. VAS: An Opera in Flatland : A Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2004. Print. Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body. New York: Knopf, 1993. Print.