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| reading:the_city_in_the_middle_of_the_night [2022-09-15 00:59] – asdf | reading:the_city_in_the_middle_of_the_night [2023-11-09 05:10] (current) – asdf |
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| Humans are not, however, the only sentient beings on the planet. | Humans are not, however, the only sentient beings on the planet. |
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| | ===== Thoughts ===== |
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| | The book's prologue strongly echoes the epilogue of [[.:The Handmaid's Tale]]. Both take place well after the primary plots and identify their respective texts as historical documents. While this frame works splendidly for //The Handmaid's Tale//, it rings hollower for //The City in the Middle of the Night//. |
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| | By granting us closure on some aspects of its narrative and sowing doubt about others, the epilogue //The Handmaid's Tale// both invites us deeper into its fiction and invites us to question features of our own world. The narrator's account, now recontextualized as a priceless primary source on Gileadean society, is of dubious provenance. While broadly in line with other sources, her story differs in enough key details to render its veracity debatable. This is a common occurrence in real-world archaeology. How do we compile overlapping but contradictory sources into a unified understanding of history? How do we address these complexities without getting bogged down by them or omitting them altogether? How much of what we think we know about history is derived from unreliable sources, sources who either misunderstood or outright lied about events? |
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| | //The City in the Middle of the Night//, by contrast, uses its prologue mostly as a hook. It tells us that the story to follow documents the emergence of a new species and introduces the linguistic theme that will carry through the text. Unlike in //The Handmaid's Tale//, this detail is at best inconsequential and at worst detrimental to the overall story. //The City in the Middle of the Night// is told alternately in first person (from Sophie's perspective) and third person (from Mouth's). If we accept that this is a historical document, then who composed it? Certainly Sophie's chapters could be assumed to be memoirs, but what of Mouth's? Sophie's new body allows her to share her own thoughts but not to extract them from humans. |
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| | This is admittedly something of a nitpick. As mentioned above, the prologue is largely inconsequential. |
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| | {{tag>fiction}} |
| ---- struct data ---- | ---- struct data ---- |
| | readinglist.author : Anders |
| | readinglist.title : The City in the Middle of the Night |
| | readinglist.summary : A young woman struggles to survive in a highly regimented city on an unforgiving planet. |
| | readinglist.status : read |
| | readinglist.subjects : fiction |
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