Sample+Reviews

Sample Review for //Flatland// by Edwin A. Abbot


Is //Flatland// a mathematical masterpiece or does it fall //flat//? After reading through this 96-page “Romance of Many Dimensions,” I’d have to say that the novel falls somewhere in between. Edwin Abbott’s tale about a two-dimension world is an intriguing read. Part One is the most enjoyable part of the text, as the narrator takes the reader on a tour of the land explaining its rules and inhabitants. At times visualizing this 2-D plane is difficult and requires that the reader “act out” some of the exercises and examples given in the book. This demanding nature of the book might turn off some people that are too lazy to get out of their chairs or are unwilling to challenge their brains and their 3-D centric viewpoints. Readers that are willingly to take this leap are in for a rewarding experience.

As for a flowing narrative and a compelling read, //Flatland// is not. At times the novel gets too bogged down in its own explanations and sidetracks; however, it does not tread in these banal territories too long. Additionally, //Flatland// is a great cultural and societal study. The book, written in the late 1800s, is an important study when discussing the status of women, the disabled, and the lower and working class. Given the time period of its creation, it should be obvious that the book treats none of these groups fairly. Yet, it is interesting that this book was published on the cusp of the beginnings of great social reform and cultural revolution throughout the world for the next 100 years and beyond.


 * Sample Review for "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" by Flannery O'Connor**


 * [Paragraph 1: Can you tell that I read the story?] **

Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” is a powerful short story set in the sleepy, rural south involving the convergence of four peculiar characters. A one-armed drifter named Shifltet appears at the desolate home of a mother and her deaf, mute adult daughter who share the name Lucynell Crater. Dialogue between the older woman and Mr. Shifltlet reveals questionable motivations on both sides: He’s interested in her car, and she’s interested in reeling in someone to serve as a husband for her daughter and a man of the house. Shiftlet is aptly named, as he shifts between a teaching the deaf woman her first word, “bird,” symbolic of flight and freedom, and abandoning her in a diner after making her his bride. He dismisses as a “hitchhiker” this very picture of innocence, an “angel-of-Gawd” in strangers’ eyes. The story’s title words appear on a billboard as Shiftlet speeds away: “Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own.” Surprisingly late, the plot is further complicated when Shiftlet picks up a young runaway and the two engage in a brief, emotional argument about mothers as a downpour approaches.


 * [Paragraph 2: Can you tell that I’ve done some thinking about it?] **

Though it is easy at first glance to dismiss O’Connor’s story as unevenly paced and her choices as arbitrary, a reader needs only ponder one question to reveal layers of depth and possibility. The key question is the significance of the title. These words are typically interpreted as a message about being rewarded for unselfishness, for doing good on another’s behalf. Unfortunately, a selfish desire or expectation of reward, is often what actually motivates people’s good deeds. “The Life You Save May Be Your Own." Whose life, and what sort of salvation? The mother appears to be trying to save her daughter from loneliness. Is she in fact trying to save herself from a decaying home and a dreary life? Shiftlet appears to save young Lucynell from her prison as a woman deaf, mute, isolated, and essentially helpless. He ends up, in fact, saving his own livelihood by gaining an automobile, valuable financially and as a means of escape. Does the title instead refer to Shiftlet saving the life of the young hitchhiker by removing him from danger? Does their conversation about mothers reveal the need for Shiftlet to save his own life by salvaging relationships with his mother, his new mother-in-law, and/ or his wife, the potential mother of his own children? Is he seeking salvation in a religious sense, repenting of past and recent wrongs, making up for abandoning one “hitchhiker” by picking up another? Is he part of the slime he refers to in the story’s final paragraphs when he appeals to his god, “Break forth and wash the slime from the earth”? O’Connor ‘s story is rich with possibilty, and with each shift in the title’s meaning, the nature of her characters, the story’s primary conflict, its climax, and its messages move and expand in thought-provoking ways.