The quote Jennifer mentioned from Harvey\u2019s article describes Orr\u2019s experience perfectly. Harvey discusses the coexistence of fragmentary \u201cpossible worlds\u201d in an \u201cimpossible Space\u201d superimposed upon one another (48), and says that rather than unraveling a mystery (the old detective story theme again), characters must simply ask which world they are in and what they\u2019re supposed to do there. It\u2019s interesting that the novel is told from multiple perspectives. If it were only told from only Orr\u2019s point of view, we might start to doubt his reliability as a narrator.<\/p>\n
Orr\u2019s situation is unusual for a lot of reasons, one being that only he and others present at the time of his hypnosis register the shifting of reality. Not only does he realize it, but he also remembers all other realities as well. This forces him to feel at odds with the world and overwhelmed by his circumstances (like Oedipa and her many counterproductive clues): \u201cHe took it as it came. He was living almost like a young child, among actualities only. He was surprised by nothing, and by everything\u201d (126). I think this confusion plays off of the fragility of memory itself. Memory is already unreliable\u2013no two people remember the same story exactly the same way with all the same details.<\/p>\n
Despite memory inconsistency, there is still this idea that linear history and memory continuity provides some frame of reference for our daily lives. But Harvey says: \u201cPostmodernism abandons all sense of historical continuity and memory, while simultaneously developing an incredible ability to plunder history and absorb whatever it finds there as some aspect of the present\u201d (54). Orr\u2019s dreams completely disrupt his sense of the past, which makes for a disturbing, turbulent reality.<\/p>\n
Throughout the book there\u2019s this ethical struggle between Orr and Haber. At one point Orr wonders if other people have the same gift he has, and if so, whether everyone\u2019s reality is constantly being replaced and renewed, to the awareness of only the dreamer. If so, he says it\u2019s probably better that the rest of the world is ignorant to these constant changes. This hypothesis would basically wipe out free will, even by the dreamer controlling the world (as dreams are typically uncontrollable). Their reality becomes like a dream itself, in which there is no free will anyway. The mind does what it wants, creates its own reality, and subjects that reality upon others\u2019 histories.<\/p>\n
Does this novel imply the absence of some sort of God or higher power, then, too? The whole premise is that of \u201cplaying God,\u201d naturally and technologically, at the same time as hesitating to do so. Orr is a draftsman. He understands the logical design of elements, but believes that \u201cit\u2019s wrong to force the pattern of things\u201d (82). Haber, who seems to believe he is truly doing humanity a service, overlooks the wiping out of thousands of people as well as all historical significance. (History, by the way, threw me off at the part when Orr enters the Antique shop. For example, why was Eisenhower still there in photograph form, and was he gray too?)<\/p>\n
One last thing I wanted to bring up is about human complexity. Orr, whose name is pretty overtly used as symbolism (he\u2019s Either, Orr, the perfectly average human, not a superman despite his immense power), is pretty wishy-washy almost always. Yet he is the one experiencing the most humanlike questioning of ethics (at the same time as being used as an object, a tool). Heather is supposedly nonexistent in the gray world solely because her skin had once been brown. And Haber is often seen as the most complex and powerful of all of them, although he becomes quite vegetable-like at the end. Actually, he\u2019s compared to an onion, too: \u201cslip off layer after layer of personality, belief, response, infinite layers, no end to them, no center to him. Nowhere that he ever stopped, had to stop\u2026No being, only layers\u201d (81). There is no person under the onion, just like Oedipa and her millions of clothes. How is it that these two contrasting people can exist in world after world, but Heather disappears?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The quote Jennifer mentioned from Harvey\u2019s article describes Orr\u2019s experience perfectly. Harvey discusses the coexistence of fragmentary \u201cpossible worlds\u201d in an \u201cimpossible Space\u201d superimposed upon one another (48), and says that rather than unraveling a mystery (the old detective story theme again), characters must simply ask which world they are in and what they\u2019re supposed … Continue reading Free Will vs. Control, and the \u201cProblem of Perspective\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16,35,48,34],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-4-le-guin","tag-harvey","tag-reality","tag-reliability","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}