Wait so this isn't a Sex & the City spinoff?
Kidding. But even if I hadn't been joking around this post would have mostly likely started, ended, and been almost totally made up by question marks. Though we were warned in class that this book would be confusing at first, I wasn't quite prepared for what I read.
The most helpful thing I've read thus far, in relation to trying to understand the "concept" of two cities existing in the same place (maybe? I'm not even sure yet if that's right.) was the quote on the back cover of the book.
"...Skillfully examines the illusions people embrace to preserve their preferred social realities" (from Publishers Weekly, apparently).
So my theory as the concept is that the two warring cities are a metaphor for different parts of society, namely the upper and lower classes. Just as the people of Beszel “unsee” or avoid looking at Ul Qoma even though it’s visible, people of the higher class avoid looking at the seedier parts of any town (though I was mostly thinking about big cities having upscale parts and ghettos) despite the fact that they could, if they wanted to. If you look at cities like New York, it’s sometimes tempting to see Harlem as a totally different city than, say, 5th Avenue.
The whole being in the same place physically trips me up a bit, as I’m sure it was intended to. My brain can’t process that in one spot there could be two different spaces. Is that even right? The terminology of crosshatches, alters, etc throws me off quite a bit.
Does this remind anyone else of 1984 a little bit? Though it isn’t technically dystopian, Beszel seems pretty shady and undesirable, and the whole “unseeing” phenomenon reminds me a lot of the concept of doublespeak, where you say (or see) something but never really acknowledge it or process it. Either way, little bit mind blowing.
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