The first three pages that were linked together which I selected are the following:
http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGS0B4.html,
http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGS097.html,
http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/hgs/HGS113.html.
The first page that drew my interest happened to be the shortest. The main section states in big, bold letters, “Good news about the end of the world.” This phrase is surrounded by two other phrases on top and bottom. On top, an ominous message says, “It’s always later than you think.”
On bottom, it reads “Feeding your fears since 1945.” I immediately concluded that this page was referring to the beginning of the Cold War (1945) and the age of nuclear weapons. The first line refers to two meanings. The first being that the end of the world and the onset of darkness are much closer at hand then most of us realize. The second I thought referred to government warnings or reassurances that were used to mislead the public and preventing mass hysteria. The “…since 1945,” section was satirical because it played off on the commercialized American society with this popular corporate slogan.
The second page was titled “Drivers.” The story begins with two people, a couple perhaps, waking up late. There is a foreshadowing of trouble in the first stanza which relates back to the theme of the first page. At the beginning there didn’t seem to be much of a connection, but by the third stanza, war and death are mentioned as one of the characters, Bent, is unable to get up and attend the program. I assume the “program” refers to a government sponsored therapy for veterans.
War is an obvious connection of the two “lexia.” Other commonalities include fear and anxiety.
The third page was titled “Epigraph.” The definition of epigraph is: a motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme. At first glance there were some obvious differences in the formatting of the page compared to the other two that I examined. The first noticeable difference is that unlike the other pages which have four different links leading to four separate literary pieces, “Epigraph,” has four links which all lead to the same page. I found this odd. The second one was that this was the only piece with an author listed at the bottom: Taylor and Saarinen. This work addresses the intellectual discussion about the end of history and time. One of the key phrases, “The issue is neither philosophical nor literary but technological,” is interesting because I related the technological aspect back to the nuclear reference on the first page and use of advanced weaponry, possibly chemical, that could’ve affected Bent on the second page. The other theme of this piece, was the inevitably of time taking its effect on the world and the impossibility of putting down “brakes.” Hence, this is why all of the links on this page are titled “Faster.”
All three linked pages are connected together by common themes and social issues. Every piece makes an allusion to war. From war, and our self-destruction comes the realization that whether through nuclear warheads, biological weapons, or being just naïve or arrogant, we are doomed. The end is near and the world of men will come to a close.
In relation to the Hegirascope, these pages share the element of unity. On first reading, some of the connections and ideas might seem a stretch, but when broken down by sentence and phrase the similarities are blatant. In this exercise, I think it was key to discuss three links instead of just two, this really helped in illustrating the connections that exist throughout the matrix that is the Hegirascope.