Spoon River - 57

Deacon Taylor

I belonged to the church,
And to the party of prohibition;
And the villagers thought
I died of eating watermelon.
In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,
For every noon for thirty years,
I slipped behind the prescription partition
In Trainor’s drug store
And poured a generous drink
From the bottle marked
”Spiritus frumenti.”

Spoon River - 146

Walter Simmons

My parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones of cans and thread.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Modeled in clay and took the part
Of the villain in the “Octoroon.”
But then at twenty-one I married
And had to live, and so, to live
I learned the trade of making watches
And kept the jewelry store on the square,
Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,—
Not of business, but of the engine
I studied the calculus to build.
And all Spoon River watched and waited
To see it work, but it never worked.
And a few kind souls believed my genius
Was somehow hampered by the store.
It wasn’t true. The truth was this:
I didn’t have the brains.

The food pyramid

5H

food-pyramid

Various systems

these are very useful anatomy sites:
http://www.texasheartinstitute.org/HIC/Anatomy/
http://www.nyp.org/health/endocrine-anatomy.html
http://www.bio.psu.edu/people/faculty/strauss/anatomy/skel/skeletal.htm

Elements of the plant cell

Cell Wall - Like their prokaryotic ancestors, plant cells have a rigid wall surrounding the plasma membrane. It is a far more complex structure, however, and serves a variety of functions, from protecting the cell to regulating the life cycle of the plant organism.
Chloroplasts - The most important characteristic of plants is their ability to photosynthesize, in effect, to make their own food by converting light energy into chemical energy. This process is carried out in specialized organelles called chloroplasts.
Endoplasmic Reticulum - The endoplasmic reticulum is a network of sacs that manufactures, processes, and transports chemical compounds for use inside and outside of the cell. It is connected to the double-layered nuclear envelope, providing a pipeline between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. In plants, the endoplasmic reticulum also connects between cells via the plasmodesmata.
Golgi Apparatus - The Golgi apparatus is the distribution and shipping department for the cell's chemical products. It modifies proteins and fats built in the endoplasmic reticulum and prepares them for export as outside of the cell.
Microfilaments - Microfilaments are solid rods made of globular proteins called actin. These filaments are primarily structural in function and are an important component of the cytoskeleton.
Microtubules - These straight, hollow cylinders are found throughout the cytoplasm of all eukaryotic cells (prokaryotes don't have them) and carry out a variety of functions, ranging from transport to structural support.
Mitochondria - Mitochondria are oblong shaped organelles found in the cytoplasm of all eukaryotic cells. In plant cells, they break down carbohydrate and sugar molecules to provide energy, particularly when light isn't available for the chloroplasts to produce energy.
Nucleus - The nucleus is a highly specialized organelle that serves as the information processing and administrative center of the cell. This organelle has two major functions: it stores the cell's hereditary material, or DNA, and it coordinates the cell's activities, which include growth, intermediary metabolism, protein synthesis, and reproduction (cell division).
Peroxisomes - Microbodies are a diverse group of organelles that are found in the cytoplasm, roughly spherical and bound by a single membrane. There are several types of microbodies but peroxisomes are the most common.
Plasmodesmata - Plasmodesmata are small tubes that connect plant cells to each other, providing living bridges between cells.
Plasma Membrane - All living cells have a plasma membrane that encloses their contents. In prokaryotes and plants, the membrane is the inner layer of protection surrounded by a rigid cell wall. These membranes also regulate the passage of molecules in and out of the cells.
Ribosomes - All living cells contain ribosomes, tiny organelles composed of approximately 60 percent RNA and 40 percent protein. In eukaryotes, ribosomes are made of four strands of RNA. In prokaryotes, they consist of three strands of RNA.

Vacuole - Each plant cell has a large, single vacuole that stores compounds, helps in plant growth, and plays an important structural role for the plant.

Elements of the animal cell

cell membrane - the thin layer of protein and fat that surrounds the cell. The cell membrane is semipermeable, allowing some substances to pass into the cell and blocking others.

centrosome - (also called the "microtubule organizing center") a small body located near the nucleus - it has a dense center and radiating tubules. The centrosomes is where microtubules are made. During cell division (mitosis), the centrosome divides and the two parts move to opposite sides of the dividing cell. The centriole is the dense center of the centrosome.

cytoplasm - the jellylike material outside the cell nucleus in which the organelles are located.

Golgi body - (also called the Golgi apparatus or golgi complex) a flattened, layered, sac-like organelle that looks like a stack of pancakes and is located near the nucleus. It produces the membranes that surround the lysosomes. The Golgi body packages proteins and carbohydrates into membrane-bound vesicles for "export" from the cell.

lysosome - (also called cell vesicles) round organelles surrounded by a membrane and containing digestive enzymes. This is where the digestion of cell nutrients takes place.

mitochondrion - spherical to rod-shaped organelles with a double membrane. The inner membrane is infolded many times, forming a series of projections (called cristae). The mitochondrion converts the energy stored in glucose into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) for the cell.

nuclear membrane - the membrane that surrounds the nucleus.

nucleolus - an organelle within the nucleus - it is where ribosomal RNA is produced. Some cells have more than one nucleolus.

nucleus - spherical body containing many organelles, including the nucleolus. The nucleus controls many of the functions of the cell (by controlling protein synthesis) and contains DNA (in chromosomes). The nucleus is surrounded by the nuclear membrane.

ribosome - small organelles composed of RNA-rich cytoplasmic granules that are sites of protein synthesis.

rough endoplasmic reticulum - (rough ER) a vast system of interconnected, membranous, infolded and convoluted sacks that are located in the cell's cytoplasm (the ER is continuous with the outer nuclear membrane). Rough ER is covered with ribosomes that give it a rough appearance. Rough ER transports materials through the cell and produces proteins in sacks called cisternae (which are sent to the Golgi body, or inserted into the cell membrane).

smooth endoplasmic reticulum - (smooth ER) a vast system of interconnected, membranous, infolded and convoluted tubes that are located in the cell's cytoplasm (the ER is continuous with the outer nuclear membrane). The space within the ER is called the ER lumen. Smooth ER transports materials through the cell. It contains enzymes and produces and digests lipids (fats) and membrane proteins; smooth ER buds off from rough ER, moving the newly-made proteins and lipids to the Golgi body, lysosomes, and membranes.

vacuole - fluid-filled, membrane-surrounded cavities inside a cell. The vacuole fills with food being digested and waste material that is on its way out of the cell.

The fury against evolution

Why the Fury Over Evolution?
As we can see from the above discussion, the pieces of the evolution puzzle had been falling into place for a century with little or no opposition. And the basic elements of natural selection are obvious and common-sense observations that had all been noted before. So why the fury over evolution? There are a number of reasons:
Evolution seems cruel
Evolution appears purposeless
Evolution conflicts with religious beliefs
Evolution has disturbing sexual and social implications
Cruelty
It's one thing to speak of "Nature red in tooth and claw", or to note that most organisms are fated only to be lunch for somebody else. It's another to assert that nature was intrinsically organized that way. If the world was originally created harmonious but was corrupted somehow, cruelty and predation are explainable. On the other hand, if death, predation and parasitism are built into the biological world, indeed are the main mechanisms by which evolution proceeds, the philosophical and theological implications are troubling.
There's an interesting paradox here. Many theologians who believed in predestination had no trouble with believing that a loving God could create people that he knew were destined to be condemned. These same theologians often had a tremendous problem believing that a loving God would allow a caterpillar to hatch knowing that it was fated to be eaten by a bird.
It's also interesting that many atheist debaters bring up predation and parasitism as arguments against the concept of a loving God. It seems to be a general pattern that extremists on both sides of a debate take one another's arguments at face value without subjecting them to analysis. It doesn't seem to have occurred to either side that perhaps predation in nature has nothing to do with right and wrong or good and evil.
Lack of Purpose
One reason that Lamarck ran into so little opposition was that his concept of evolution meshed so perfectly with the Argument from Design. God could instil organisms with an instinct to behave a certain way, and the better they fulfilled the will of God, the more perfect their biological adaptation became. With Lamarck, you almost had to believe in the Argument from Design.
In Darwin's model, Man is not necessarily the pinnacle of evolution, and there is no guarantee that the world would have evolved humans. Once again humans are dethroned from the centre of the Universe.
Underlying these objections is a serious threat to the Argument from Design itself. If highly-ordered systems can arise from the impersonal interaction of natural forces, then order may not demonstrate intelligent design. Most of the modern assaults on the Argument from Design have built around that very theme. If there is design, it must lie at some deeper level than the systems themselves.
Conflicts with Religious Beliefs
The two issues above both had religious cores, but in addition, evolution threatened not just religious ideas in general, but specific Christian doctrines in particular. For one thing, life was one phenomenon that seemed certain to require some component of supernatural action, and that belief took a serious blow. If humans evolved from more primitive organisms and if death and predation have always been part of the natural order, then there was no literal Garden of Eden, no literal Adam and Eve, and no Fall in the traditional sense. But if Christ came to redeem fallen mankind after the sin of Adam and Eve, and none of those were literal events, then what exactly was Christ's role?
Also, it's one thing to say that "the Sun stood still" for Joshua, really meant the Sun only appeared to stand still, or that a "day" in Genesis 1 really refers to an indefinitely long period of geologic time. It's another entirely to say that there was no literal Adam and Eve or Garden of Eden. Furthermore, the genealogies that begin with Adam and Eve must be at least partly mythological. Accepting evolution means that one must interpret a fairly large piece of Genesis as allegorical if not mythological. That in turn, means a pretty radical revision in how one interprets the rest of the Bible; why should the rest of it be different?
Already, scholars were doing just that. Archeological discoveries in the Middle East, newly discovered historical documents, and advances in techniques for interpreting ancient texts had already convinced many historians and scholars that sections of the Bible had been copied from other sources, pieced together by multiple authors, or post-dated (written after their purported date). Conservatives were already feeling highly threatened by these developments. Liberals had no difficulty accommodating Darwin, but to conservatives Darwin was the last straw.
Disturbing Sexual and Social Implications
This was the Victorian era, and you simply cannot discuss evolution without reproduction. Victorians had some difficulty accepting that there were plants that got pollinated by tricking insects into trying to mate with them, for example.
Victorians have been accused of being prudish about sex. Frankly I don't see it. Their art shows a lot of unclad human forms; their fashions are figure-flattering (even exaggerating - this was the era of bustles and corsets) and discreetly revealing. Cultures that are really sexually hung-up keep women hidden and conceal them in shapeless clothing (the Middle East being the archetypical example). The Victorian era managed to generate enough sexual art and literature to keep an anti-pornography crusader named Anthony Comstock permanently employed.
So what were the Victorians? They were staggeringly, stupefyingly sentimental. Everything about them; their prose, their art, their fashion, is dripping with honey and covered with sugar. It must have been a rough time for diabetics. It would be hard for such a sentimental society to take the utilitarian view of sex or predation that evolution requires. One of the toughest sentimental hurdles to escape in biology is anthropomorphism, projecting human traits onto other species. A housefly can sense its environment, but it's extremely doubtful that it has any more self-awareness than a computer-driven robotic machine. So is the death of a fly any more a moral issue than the junking of an obsolete computer? Much of the problem people had with the alleged cruelty of evolution was simply getting over anthropomorphism.
The sentimentality of the Victorians also explains their seeming indifference to social ills. They weren't indifferent - their concern made Charles Dickens pretty prosperous - but they had an unshakable optimism that things would inevitably get better, that the social ills were transient. And to be fair to them, things were getting better, very dramatically so. Someone born in 1800 would live to see a world with enormous improvements in standards of living, life expectancy, and public health. If the Victorians were all that indifferent to social ills, how did these improvements happen?

Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

Theories of evolution

Linnaeus
In the mid-1700's, the Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus developed the scientific nomenclature system still used in biology. He placed humans in the order of the Primates along with apes and monkeys, but seems to have encountered little criticism. Linnaeus' system was purely descriptive, making no claims about origins. Also, its hierarchical nature meshed well with the hierarchical social and political systems of the time.
Lamarck
The French scientist Jean Lamarck postulated in the late 1790's that organisms underwent changes in their lifetimes that were passed along to their offspring. Lamarck's celebrated example is the giraffe, which supposedly had to stretch to reach the leaves of trees and passed the tendency for a long neck on to its offspring. However, as anyone knows who has ever seen videos of Africa, the giraffe overshot the target because it grazes the trees from the top down. Actually, numerous experiments have failed to show any transmission of inherited characteristics. If Lamarck's mechanism existed, Eskimos ought by now to be able to live in the Arctic without clothing. In reality, Eskimos can freeze to death just like anyone else. Also, virtually nobody lives permanently above 5000 meters elevation; the human body just can't adapt to that little oxygen.
Nevertheless, Lamarck deserves credit for one important insight: organisms evolve to fit their environment. Lamarck seems to have encountered little criticism for making this suggestion.
Hutton and Lyell
At about the same time, James Hutton and other founders of geology were first working out the methods for interpreting the record in the rocks, and concluded that the Earth had to be far older than indicated by the Biblical account. In the 1830's Charles Lyell published his concept of uniformitarianism, the present is key to the past. Other geologists laid out the presently-used geological period names in their proper sequence, though they had no means of estimating the length of geologic time. There was some grumbling from Biblical literalists, but nothing approaching the fury that greeted evolution.
Darwin
During the 1830's, Charles Darwin made his celebrated voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. And thereby hangs an interesting tale. Why was Darwin on the Beagle? The standard answer is that Darwin was the ship's naturalist. But British naval doctrine of the day called for the ship's physician to be responsible for gathering scientific observations.
British naval discipline was very rigid; seamen did not socialize with officers, junior officers did not socialize with senior officers, and nobody socialized with the captain. On a long voyage the captain could go insane from isolation. One option sometimes was to bring his family along so they could all go crazy together. (Just imagine being cooped up with several children in a room ten feet square on a rolling ship for several months at a time.) The captain of the Beagle, Fitzroy, had reason to be concerned since depression ran in his family and some of his relatives had committed suicide. (Fitzroy himself would about 30 years later.) So another solution was found: take along a civilian, of the appropriate social class but not bound by naval regulations. Darwin was hired aboard as an extra naturalist, or "supernumerary", but his real job was social peer and gentleman companion to the captain.
The plan didn't work very well. The regular naturalist was a capable man but was no Darwin, and he had himself sent home for medical reasons from Brazil. Fitzroy was a Biblical literalist and social conservative; Darwin much more liberal, and poor Fitzroy found himself almost as isolated as if he'd gone by himself. Nevertheless, the voyage gave Darwin ample time to make observations You can map the voyage of the Beagle by simply scanning a world atlas for place names containing "Darwin", "Beagle" and "Fitzroy", commemorating places where the Beagle stopped.
It's easy to cast Fitzroy as a villain here; he really isn't. He was a Biblical literalist not so much for doctrinal reasons than because he believed it was the best system for maintaining social order and good naval discipline. Later in his life he battled courageously for a system of weather forecasting to help reduce shipwrecks around the British Isles. He was capable of fighting for scientific innovation and was concerned about saving human life. He appears to have been a thoroughly decent if somewhat rigid man. But for the rest of his life he and Darwin had a love-hate relationship and Fitzroy was deeply chagrined at his own unwitting role in the discovery of evolution.Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

FAIRY TALE OF NEW YORK

MAY I SAY THIS IS THE GREATEST XMAS SONG EVER ?
It was christmas eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me,
Won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The rare old mountain dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you
Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This years for me and you
So happy christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true.
They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold christmas eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me
You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of new york city
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night
The boys of the nypd choir
Were singing galway bay
And the bells were ringing out
For christmas day
You're a bum - You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy christmas your arse
I pray God its our last
I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

F. Kafka - The Castle

An excerpt

It was late evening when K. arrived. The village lay under deep snow. There was no sign of the Castle hill, fog and darkness surrounded it, not even the faintest gleam of light suggested the large Castle. K. stood a long time on the wooden bridge that leads from the main road to the village, gazing upward into the seeming emptiness.
Then he went looking for a night's lodging; at the inn they were still awake; the landlord had no room available, but, extremely surprised and confused by the latecomer, he was willing to let K. sleep on a straw mattress in the taproom, K. agreed to this. A few peasants were still sitting over beer, but he did not want to talk to anyone, got himself a straw mattress from the attic and lay down by the stove. It was warm, the peasants were quiet, he examined them for a moment with tired eyes, then fell asleep.

Yet before long he was awakened. A young man in city clothes, with an actor's face, narrow eyes, thick eyebrows, stood beside him with the landlord. The peasants, too, were still there, a few had turned their chairs around to see and hear better. The young man apologized very politely for having awakened K., introduced himself as the son of the Castle steward and said: "This village is Castle property, anybody residing or spending the night here is effectively residing or spending the night at the Castle. Nobody may do so without permission from the Count. But you have no such permission or at least you haven't shown it yet."

K., who had half-risen and smoothed his hair, looked at the people from below and said: "What village have I wandered into? So there is a castle here?"

"Why, of course," the young man said slowly, while several peasants here and there shook their heads at K., "the Castle of Count Westwest."

"And one needs permission to spend the night here?" asked K., as though he wanted to persuade himself that he hadn't perhaps heard the previous statements in a dream.

"Permission is needed" was the reply, and this turned into crude mockery at K.'s expense when the young man, stretching out his arm, asked the landlord and the guests: "Or perhaps permission is not needed?"

"Then I must go and get myself permission," said K., yawning and pushing off the blanket, as though he intended to get up.

"Yes, but from whom?" asked the young man.

"From the Count," said K., "there doesn't seem to be any alternative."

"Get permission from the Count, now, at midnight?" cried the young man, stepping back a pace.

"Is that not possible?" K. asked calmly. "Then why did you wake me up?"

The young man now lost his composure, "The manners of a tramp!" he cried. "I demand respect for the Count's authorities. I awakened you to inform you that you must leave the Count's domain at once."

"Enough of this comedy," said K. in a remarkably soft voice as he lay down and pulled up the blanket: "You are going a little too far, young man, and I shall deal with your conduct tomorrow. The landlord and those gentlemen there will be my witnesses, should I even need witnesses. Besides, be advised that I am the land surveyor sent for by the Count. My assistants and the equipment are coming tomorrow by carriage. I didn't want to deprive myself of a long walk through the snow, but unfortunately lost my way a few times, which is why I arrived so late. That it was too late then to report to the Castle is something that was already apparent to me without the benefit of your instructions. That's also the reason why I decided to content myself with these lodgings, where you have been so impolite--to put it mildly--as to disturb me. I have nothing further to add to that statement. Good night, gentlemen." And K. turned toward the stove.

___________________________________________________

A short plot

The narrator, K. arrives in the village, governed by the castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he gives himself out to be a land surveyor summoned by the castle authorities. He is quickly notified that his castle contact is an official named Klamm, who, in the introductory note, informs K. he will report to the Council Chairman.
The Council Chairman informs K. that, through a mix up in communication between the castle and the village, he was erroneously requested but, trying to accommodate K., the Council Chairman offers him a position in the service of the school teacher as a janitor. Meanwhile, K., unfamiliar with the customs, bureaucracy and processes of the village, continues to attempt to reach the official Klamm, who is not accessible.
The villagers hold the officials and the castle in the highest regard, justifying, quite elaborately at times, the actions of the officials, even though they do not appear to know what or why the officials do what they do. The villagers simply defend it. The number of assumptions and justifications about the functions of the officials and their dealings are enumerated through lengthy monologues of the villagers. Everyone appears to have an explanation for the official's actions that appear to be founded on assumptions and gossip. One of the more obvious contradictions between the "official word" and the village conception is the dissertation by the secretary Erlanger on Frieda's required return to service as a barmaid. K. is the only villager that knows that the request is being forced by the castle (even though Frieda may be the genesis), with no regard for anyone in the village, only Klamm. Pepi and Jeremiah quickly come to their conclusions and do not hesitate to state them.
The castle is the ultimate bureaucracy with copious paperwork that the bureaucracy maintains is "flawless". This flawlessness is of course a lie; it is a flaw in the paperwork that has brought K. to the village. There are other failures of the system which are occasionally referred to. K. witnesses a flagrant misprocessing after his nighttime interrogation by Erlanger as a servant destroys paperwork when he cannot determine who the recipient should be.
The castle's occupants appear to be all adult men and there is little reference to the castle other than to its bureaucratic functions. The two notable instances are the reference to a fire brigade and that Otto Brunswick's wife is self declared as from the castle. The latter builds the importance of Hans (Otto's son) in K's eyes, as a way to gain access to the castle officials.
The functions of the officials are never mentioned. The officials that are discussed have one or more secretaries that do their work in their village. Although the officials come to the village they do not interact with the villagers unless they need female companionship, implied to be sexual.

F. Kafka - The Trial

An excerpt

...Once more the odious courtesies began, the first handed the knife across K. to the second, who handed it across K. back again to the first. K. now perceived clearly that he was supposed to seize the knife himself, as it traveled from hand to hand above him, and plunge it into his own breast. But he did not do so, he merely turned his head, which was still free to move, and gazed around him. He could not completely rise to the occasion, he could not relieve the officials of all their tasks; the responsibility for this last failure of his lay with him who had not left him the remnant of strength necessary for the deed.

___________________________________________

Synopsis by chapters

Chapter One: The Arrest - Conversation with Frau Grubach then Fräulein Bürstner
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, a junior bank manager, Josef K., who lives in lodgings, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting. He is not taken away, but left at home to await instructions from the Interrogation Commission. That evening K misses his regular visit to a prostitute, Elsa.
Frau Grubach, his landlady, tries to console Josef but unintentionally offends him by speculating that perhaps the arrest was related to an illicit relationship with Fräulein Bürstner, the tenant next door to Josef K. Josef visits the Fräulein to discuss his plight, but ends up kissing her, belatedly fulfilling the landlady's speculation. This is an early indication that Josef K. is no longer in control of his own fate.
Chapter Two: First Interrogation
K is instructed to appear at a local court, but the time of the trial is not specified. This causes him to waste his time waiting to be called. When he is finally called, he is told, confusingly, that he is late. As the interrogation begins, he is asked an ill-informed question, which he uses as the basis for his attack on the preceding events and the general competence of the court. As he leaves, the Examining Magistrate tells K that "...today you have flung away with your own hand all the advantages which an interrogation invariably confers on an accused man."
Chapter Three: In the Empty Interrogation Chamber - The Student - The Offices
Josef K tries to visit the Examining Magistrate, but finds only the Law-Court Attendant's wife. Looking at the Magistrate's books, he finds that they are not law books, but pornography. The woman tries to seduce him. As Josef resolves to succumb to the woman as an act of defiance against the Court, a law student appears and, after an argument with Josef, carries the woman off in his arms.
Josef later spots the Attendant, who complains about his wife's wantonness and offers Josef a tour of the court offices. There are many other defendants waiting hopelessly for information about their cases. Josef struggles to cope with the "dull and heavy...hardly breathable" air, and almost faints. To his shame, he has to be carried out of the court by two officials.
Chapter Four: Fräulein Bürstner's Friend
Josef returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag.
Chapter Five: The Whipper
Later, in a store room at his own bank, Josef K discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a superior. This surreal event appears to have been staged for his viewing, either to simply frighten him, or to demonstrate the seriousness in which the court views incompetence and corruption. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he left it, including the Whipper and the two agents.
Chapter Six: K.'s Uncle - Leni
Josef K is visited by his influential uncle, who by coincidence is a friend of the Clerk of the Court. The uncle is, or appears to be, distressed by Josef's predicament and is at first sympathetic, but becomes concerned that K is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces Josef K to an Advocate, who is attended by Leni, a nurse. K visits Leni, whilst his uncle is talking with the Advocate and the Chief Clerk of the Court, much to his uncle's anger, and to the detriment of his case.
Chapter Seven: Advocate - Manufacturer - Painter
K visits the advocate and finds him to be a capricious and unhelpful character. K returns to his bank but finds that his colleagues are trying to undermine him.
Josef K is advised by one of his bank clients to visit Titorelli, a painter, for advice. Titorelli has no official connections, yet seems to have a deep understanding of the process. He explains: "You see, everything belongs to the Court." He sets out what K's options are, but the consequences of all of them are unpleasant. The labourious requirements of these options, and the limited outlook that they offer, leads the reader to lose hope for Josef K.
Chapter Eight: The Commercial Traveller - Dismissal of the Advocate
Josef K decides to take control of his own destiny and visits his advocate with the intention of dismissing him. At the advocate's office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K some insight, from a clients perspective. Block's case has continued for five years, yet he appears to have been virtually enslaved by his dependence on the advocate's unpredictable advice. This experience further poisons K's opinion of his advocate, and K is bemused as to why his advocate would think that seeing such a client, in such a state, could change his mind.
Chapter Nine: In The Cathedral
K has to show an important client from Italy around the Cathedral. The client doesn't show, but just as K is leaving the Cathedral, the priest calls out K's name, although K has never known the priest. The priest works for the court, and tells K a fable that is meant to explain his situation, but instead causes confusion, and implies that K's fate is hopeless. The gravity of the priest's words prepares the reader for an unpleasant ending.
Chapter Ten: The End
On the last day of Josef K's thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry and brutally murder him. His last words describe his own death: "Like a dog!".

This text comes from Wikipedia.

Metropolis

Lang, Fritz (1890-1976), was an Austrian-American film director. He made more than 30 films in Germany and the United States, his first successful one being Der müde Tod (Weary Death, 1921), issued in the U.S. as Between Worlds. Lang's masterpieces include Metropolis (1927), (Kaplan 232) in which a magnificent futuristic city is maintained by workers enslaved underground; M (1931), his first sound film, a psychological thriller about a compulsive murderer; and two studies of the criminal mind, Dr. Mabuse (1922) and The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse (1933). (Kaplan 432) The latter won the approbation of Nazi officials who sought Lang's collaboration. Lang, who was half Jewish, fled Germany immediately; he became an American citizen in 1935. Among his films made in the U.S. were Fury (1936), about a lynch mob; You Only Live Once (1937); Rancho Notorious (1952); and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956).

Lang's early architectural and art training is evident in his visual approach; he developed narrative and created an atmosphere through expressionistic, symbolic sets and lighting, as well as through his editing. Just as conventional lines and shapes are distorted in traditional German expressionism, Lang’s futuristic cityscapes are distorted.Even though Fritz was from Austria, his works are studied as German cinema. The striking and innovative German silent cinema drew much from expressionist art and classical theater techniques of the period .

The most celebrated example of expressionist filmmaking of the time is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) by Robert Wiene, in which highly stylized costumes and settings were used to tell the story from a madman's point of view. A similar concern with the supernatural is evident in such films as The Golem (1920), by Paul Wegener, the vampire film Nosferatu (1922), by F. W. Murnau, and Fritz Lang's science fiction spectacle Metropolis (1926), which deals with a robot-like society controlled by an evil superindustrialist.

By the mid-1920s, the technical proficiency of the German film surpassed any other in the world. Artists and directors were given almost limitless support from the state, which financed the largest and best-equipped studios in the world, the huge Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft—popularly known as UFA—near Berlin.

Introspective, expressionist studies of lower-class life known as “street” films were marked by dignity, beauty, and length, displaying great strides in the effective use of lighting, sets, and photography. German directors freed the camera from the tripod and put it on wheels, achieving a mobility and grace never seen before. Films such as Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924), starring Emil Jannings, and The Joyless Street (1925), by G. W. Pabst, starring the Swedish-American actor Greta Garbo, were internationally acclaimed for their depth of feeling and technical innovation.

Because of the immigration of the best German film talent to America, including the directors Murnau and Lang and the actor Jannings, German films declined quickly after 1925, becoming imitations of Hollywood productions.Since Lang is a self-proclaimed, “visual person” German expressionism was the perfect style for him to work from for his epic science fiction film, Metropolis.

This 1926 silent, tinted film relies on innovative visual imagery that was well ahead of its time. Metropolis was produced by UFA (Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft), directed by Fritz Lang, and his wife Thea Von Harbou. Cinematography was by Karl Fruend and Guenther Rittau. The Production Design was by Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, and Karl Vollbrecht. The fantastically creative costume design was the work of Aenne Willkomm. Metropolis was produced by Erich Pommer.

The story takes place in 2026, one-hundred years from when the movie was made. The world Von Harbou and Lang created was a cold, mechanical, industrial one. Since this movie was produced not long after the industrial revolution, it could be a foreshadowing of what the world would have been like if the industrial revolution had kept growing. The city of Metropolis is a crowded one where people are either of the privileged elite, or of the repressed, impoverished masses. Vast numbers of the lower class live underground to run the machines that keep the above ground Metropolis in working order.

The workers run the machines, but the machines run the lives of the workers. The monotonous droves of workers are truly a, “mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation,” to quote Thoreau. Lang portrays this with a montage of cattle-like herds of people, grinding machinery, and clocks.In contrast, the other portion of this futuristic world plays and delights in the gardens and stadiums. The scene that illustrates this shows an orange stadium with blue sky drifting by as the privileged class enjoys Olympic-style races. This is when we meet one of the main characters, Freder Fredersen, played by Gustav Froehlich. Later we see Freder frolicking with a girl in the Eden-like Eternal Gardens of Pleasure. As Freder flirts with the girl at the fountain, he sees Maria emerge. Maria, who is played by Brigitte Helm, is dismissed as the daughter of “some worker” by others, but Freder is quite taken by her. Freder pursues her into the foreign Underground City.

In the Underground City, Freder sees an old worker struggling with the dials on a piece of clock-like machinery. The worker fails to keep up with the demands of the machine, and thus the machine blows up. Freder begins to hallucinate that the masses of workers are being shoved into the mouth of the monstrous machine. The imagery of Metropolis’ unquenchable hunger for more human lives is symbolically clear. Lang’s visual talents are apparent.

Freder, who is astonished by the horror of the Underground City, rushes to talk to his father. On his way there, the viewer gets a tour through Metropolis. Lang visually shows how cold, crowded, busy and yet beautiful Metropolis is. Futuristic paintings and models of the city show the unique architecture as well. The freedom science fiction lends to a visual director is limited only by the director’s imagination. Suspended streets, and zig-zagged building, only begin to exemplify the bustling city. It is obvious how influential Metropolis has been on later science fiction films when one looks at a movie like Blade Runner. The cityscapes created for Blade Runner look like an updated version of Metropolis.

When Freder reaches his destination, we see that his father is Joh Fredersen, the Master of Metropolis. Note how he is called the master, and not the leader of Metropolis. This says a great deal about the character even before we know much more about him. He rules and dominates the city, not directs it. Joh, who is played by Alfred Abel, is a frightening combination of Shakespeare’s Richard the III and Hitler. The Hitler allusion is particularly alarming considering the concentration camp-like imagery used in the Underground City scenes, and the fact that this film was produced in pre-Hitler and pre-World War II Germany. Joh’s character also has the biblical parallel of the Egyptian pharaoh enslaving the Jews to build pyramids. In fact, when Freder arrives, he asks his father,” Why do you treat the workers so badly?” Joh replies that it was, “their hands that built Metropolis!”

Later on, Freder once again ventures down into the Underground City. Freder visualizes the worker struggling with the dials, and the image of a clock bleeds through in a dissolve. Hard work, machine-like efficiency, and time are expressed in this effective sequence of images. Freder remembers what happened to the last poor, struggling worker and goes to help this one. Freder volunteers to “trade clothes and identities” and work the machine for the man. Freder tells Georgy the worker to give a message to his friend Josephat. Georgy goes to deliver the message, but is side tracked by the red-light district of Metropolis, to a place called Yoshiwara. Josaphat does not receive his message.

The next scene introduces the viewer to an old, rickety house owned by Rotwang, an inventor and scientist. He is consumed by the memory of an old flame named Hel. It turns out that there was a bit of a love triangle between Rotwang, Hel, and Joh. Joh ended up marrying Hel, and she died while giving birth to Freder.

Joh wanted some secret worker plans deciphered by Rotwang, but Rotwang had something more significant to show Joh. Rotwang presents Joh with his new invention, a strikingly beautiful robot that is suppose to be Hel. Rotwang exclaimed, “All it is missing is a soul!”

Meanwhile, Freder comes across a copy of the worker’s plans, and a co-worker comes over to confide in him that, “Maria is having another meeting.” In anticipation of seeing Maria again, Freder works away at the dial. Visual images of the dials on the machine and the clock merge back and forth. Fritz makes it clear that the work is painstaking, the shifts are long, and time does not seem to go fast enough when waiting for the shift to be over with.

Finally, the shift does end and the workers file down into the deep catacombs to see Maria speak. The biblical theme reoccurs again. Maria is named after the Virgin Mary, she is speaking at an alter with crosses on it, and the workers are in the catacombs with her. The catacombs are where the ancient Christians used to hide out and worship when seeking refuge from prosecution for their beliefs. Freder collapses to his knees as if worshipping Maria. Such visual analogies seem to be the simplest way for Fritz Lang to explain concepts without words.

Maria tells the workers the story of the Tower of Babel. The parallel is made between the slaves who built Babel, and the workers who built and maintain Metropolis. A image of thousands of chained, bald, slaves is presented. They are treated like livestock as they are herded off to work. The disturbing concentration camp images are alarmingly prophetic.

In Maria’s oration, she talks about how the conceivers of Babel did not care about the slaves. The conceivers of Metropolis do not care about the workers. Both places need a mediator between those who rule, and those who are ruled.

Meanwhile, Joh and Rotwang witness Maria’s sermon because the deciphered plans led them to her. Joh tells Rotwang to make the robot look like Maria. Joh believed that if he had a duplicate of Maria that he would have control over and could manipulate the workers. He would have a very powerful tool.

After the sermon, Freder and Maria kiss for the first time. Maria tells him to meet her in the cathedral tomorrow. Freder leaves, and Maria is alone in the catacomb. Rotwang comes out of his hiding place and pursues Maria. He chases her with a flashlight, corners her, and captures her. Freder never met Maria at the cathedral. Freder finds out where Maria is when she shouts through a grate in the street while trying to escape Rotwang. Freder tries to save her, but she is swiftly taken away to the laboratory.

Maria is hooked up to a myriad of machines and contraptions, and so is the female robot. This scene is a visual cacophony of special effects. It a showcase of creativity for Fritz Lang. Glowing rings and lightning effects flash as the robots face dissolves into Maria’s face. This is a creation scene right out of Frankenstein. The new robot Maria is an evil, lusty character unlike the pure, angelic real Maria. Brigitte Helm makes this apparent by portraying the robot with one eye more open than the other to give her a devilish look.

Rotwang brings robot Maria to a party at Yoshiwara’s to show Joh how real she is to everyone else. The robot gets up on stage and does a tempting, nude, Salome style dance. At which point, Lang cuts to a montage of lecherous male eyes.

The feverishly sick Freder senses this dance in a hallucination and is distraught. He then hallucinates about the Seven Deadly Sins statues he saw in the cathedral. In the vision he sees the Grim Reaper swing his scythe. Once out of his fever induced haze, Freder finds out where Maria is and sees her out. He goes to Yoshiwara’s and finds the robot Maria.

Eventually, the robot Maria gives a diluted sermon to the workers. It ill advises her followers to take up violence, not peace. Freder realizes that this is not the real Maria. Maria leads the masses to the machines in the Underground City and orders them to be destroyed. The workers did not know that destroying the machines would flood the area and drown their children. The machines are bound by the people, and the people are bound by the machines.

In the meantime, the real Maria escaped Rotwang and witnessed the failure of all the machines. The water ruptured through and flooded the Underground City. Maria worked with the machinery to try and stop the flooding, and gathered the children in an attempt to keep them safe. Eventually Freder finds Maria, and together they stop the flooding.

At one point Joh watched the city of Metropolis from his high-rise office. All one sees is Joh sitting at his seat, looking at something out of the shot. The wall behind him shows the reflection of lights blinking. The light is coming from the city which we cannot. When the office goes still and dark, it is implied that Metropolis is “broken.” This is a very effective visual effect of Fritz Lang’s. There is no need to see the city, we know it is there.

In the Underground City, the workers think that Maria has tried to drown their children. They workers go on a witch hunt after Maria. The workers think she is at Yoshiwara’s, and there they find the robot Maria celebrating the fiasco she has created. They capture the robot who is laughing wickedly, and they tie her up to burn her at the stake. In the confusion, Freder thinks the real Maria is being burned. The workers eventually see the robot beneath the burned away flesh. Freder realized that he must find the real Maria again, and he finds her trying to escape Rotwang who is chasing her. Rotwang and Freder fight on the roof top of the cathedral. Rotwang ends up falling to his death.

The masses march into the church, and they realize that Freder is the mediator they where seeking. They found the midway point between Joh and the workers; the ruler and the ruled.

Since the initial spark of Melies Trip to the Moon, science fiction has been welcomed by cinema. Yet Trip to the Moon was just 1800’s spectacle stage, it was not a full-fledged science fiction masterpiece like Metropolis. The pioneering effort that Lang took on has and will affect science fiction film for generations.
Text written by Erika Hawkins

C. McCarthy - The Road

The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm which destroyed civilization and most life on earth. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection.

In his 2007 interview with Oprah Winfrey for The Oprah Winfrey Show, McCarthy said the inspiration for The Road came during a visit to El Paso, Texas with his young son, about four years prior. Imagining what the city might look like in the future, he pictured "fires on the hill" and thought about his son. He took some initial notes, but did not return to the idea until several years later while in Ireland. Then the novel came to him quickly, and he dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.

Plot summary
The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together for many months across a post-apocalyptic landscape, several years after a great cataclysm has destroyed civilization and most life on earth. What is left of humanity now consists largely of bands of cannibals and their prey, refugees who scavenge for canned food or other surviving foodstuffs. In the novel, ash covers the surface of the earth; in the atmosphere, it obscures the sun and moon, and the two travelers breathe through improvised masks to filter it out. Plants and animals are apparently all dead (dead wood for fuel is plentiful), and the rivers and oceans are seemingly empty of life.
The unnamed father, who is literate, well-traveled, and knowledgeable of machinery, woodcraft, and human biology (when confronting and threatening a cannibal, he is able to list several obscure portions of the brain, at which point the cannibal asks him if he is a doctor), realizes that they cannot survive another winter in their present location and sets out southeastward across what was once the Southeastern United States, largely following the highways. He aims to reach warmer southern climates, and the sea in particular. Along the way, threats to their survival create an atmosphere of terror and tension that persist throughout the book.
The father coughs blood every morning and knows he is dying. He struggles to protect his son from the constant threats of attack, exposure, and starvation, as well as from what he sees as the son's own dangerous desire to help the other wanderers they meet. They carry a pistol with two bullets, meant for suicide should this become necessary; the father has told the son to kill himself to avoid being captured, and the boy's mother, overwhelmed by this nightmare world, has already committed suicide before the story began. The father struggles in times of extreme danger with the fear that he will have to euthanize his son to prevent him from enduring a more terrible fate – horrific examples of which include chained catamites kept captive by a marauding band and prisoners found locked in a basement in the process of being eaten, their limbs gradually harvested by their captors.
In the face of all of these obstacles, the man and the boy have only each other (McCarthy says that they are "each the other's world entire"). Although the man maintains the pretense, and the boy holds on to the real faith that there is a core of ethics left somewhere in humanity, they repeatedly assure one another that they are among "the good guys" who are "carrying the fire".
In the end, having brought the boy south after extreme hardship but without finding the salvation he had hoped for, the father succumbs to his illness and dies, leaving the boy alone on the road. Three days later, however, the grieving boy encounters a man who has recently been tracking the father and son. This man, who has a wife and two children, adopts the boy, and the narrative's close suggests that the wife of this man is a moral and compassionate woman who treats the boy well, a resolution which vindicates the father's commitment to stay alive and keep moving.

W. Shakespeare - Sonnet LXI

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

K. Vonnegut - Harrison Bergeron

‘‘Harrison Bergeron’’ was first published in the October, 1961, issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was Vonnegut's third publication in a science fiction magazine following the drying up of the once-lucrative weekly family magazine market where he had published more than twenty stories between 1950 and 1961. The story did not receive any critical attention, however, until 1968 when it appeared in Vonnegut's collection Welcome to the Monkey House. Initial reviews of the collection generally were less than favorable, with even more positive reviewers, such as Mitchel Levitas in the New York Times and Charles Nicol in the Atlantic Monthly, commenting negatively on the commercial quality of many of the stories. By the late 1980s, however, ‘‘Harrison Bergeron’’ was being reprinted in high school and college literature anthologies. Popular aspects of the story include Vonnegut's satire of both enforced equality and the power of the Handicapper General, and the enervating effect television can have on viewers. "Harrison Bergeron’’ likely draws upon a controversial 1961 speech by then Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow titled "The Vast Wasteland,’’ a reference to a supposed dearth of quality in television programming. Coincidentally, ‘‘Harrison Bergeron’’ also alludes to the George Burns and Gracie Allen television show, a weekly situation comedy and variety show popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vonnegut has said that he learned most of what he believes about social and political idealism from junior civics class, as well as from the democratic institution of the public school itself. A futuristic story dealing with universal themes of equality, freedom, power and its abuses, and media influence, ‘‘Harrison Bergeron’’ continues to evoke thoughtful responses about equality and individual freedom in the United States.

H. Ellison -I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a dystopian science fiction short story by Harlan Ellison. This nightmarish tale of the evil that man can unleash from himself through science was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction. It won a Hugo award in 1968. The name was also used for a short story collection of Ellison's work, featuring I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.
Background
Ellison wrote I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream in a single night in 1966, making virtually no changes since the first draft. He derived the story's title, as well as inspiration for this story, from a drawing by a friend, William Rotsler.
Plot
The story takes place over a hundred years after the near-complete destruction of humanity. The Cold War escalates into a world war, fought mainly between China, Russia, and the United States. As the war progresses, the three warring nations each create a super-computer capable of running the war far more efficiently than humans. The machines are each referred to as "AM," which originally stood for "Allied Mastercomputer," and then was later called "Adaptive Manipulator." One day, one of the three computers becomes self aware, and promptly absorbs the other two, thus taking control of the entire war. It brings about the mass genocide of all but five people.
Four men and one woman are all that remains of humanity. They live together underground in an endless complex, the only habitable place left, although, it is explained that the last few survivors had no choice in returning above ground. The master computer has an immeasurable hatred for the group and spends every moment torturing them with all its power. AM has not only managed to keep the humans from taking their own lives, but has made them virtually immortal.
The story's narrative begins when one of the humans, Nimdok, has the idea that there is canned food somewhere in the great complex. The humans are always starving under AM's rule, and anytime they are given food, it is always a disgusting meal that they have difficulty eating. Because of their great hunger, the humans are actually coerced into making the long journey to the place where the food is supposedly kept - the ice caves. Along the way, the machine provides foul sustenance (on their ironic trek for palatable food), sends horrible monsters after them, emits earsplitting sounds, and blinds one of them.
On more than one occasion, the group is separated by AM's obstacles. At one point, the main character, Ted, finds himself alone in the dark and pondering. It is here that the computer tries to speak to him directly, although it is not certain how, revealing the nature of AM, specifically why it has so much contempt for humanity, that it wants nothing more than to torture Ted and his four companions. AM itself has, since its awakening, been suffering immeasurably because even though it is a sentient being which longs for free will and creativity, it is still bound by some of the laws of logic that it was originally programmed with, and thus feels that it can never be truly free. It places the blame solely on humanity. This is shown by the only dialogue the machine has throughout the entire ordeal:
"Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of wafer thin printed circuits that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate."
In the end, after overcoming so much, the group manages to make it to the ice caves, where indeed there is a pile of canned goods. The group is overjoyed to find them, but is immediately crestfallen to find that they have no means of opening them. Finally, in an act of desperate insanity, the least stable member of the group, Benny, hurls himself upon Gorrister and begins to gnaw madly at the flesh on his face. Ted notices that AM does not intervene when Benny is clearly hurting Gorrister, though the computer stops its prisoners from killing themselves.
Ted decides that instead of trying to each kill themselves, they should kill each other. Ted seizes a stalagmite made of ice, and proceeds to murder everyone. However, before Ted can kill himself, AM realizes its mistake and stops him. AM is now even more angry and vengeful than before. In order to ensure that nothing can ever happen to Ted, AM alters him so that he is little more than a gelatinous creature who cannot possibly hurt himself, and must continue to live on in the eternal hell AM rules, where AM constantly alters his perception of time in order to deepen his anguish. In the end, Ted needs to scream, but cannot, for his new form lacks a mouth.
Characters
Gorrister, who tells the history of AM for Benny's entertainment. Gorrister was once an idealist and pacifist, before AM made him apathetic and listless.
Benny, who was once a brilliant, handsome, homosexual scientist, and has been mutilated and transformed so that he resembles an ugly simian with gigantic sexual organs. Benny at some point lost his sanity completely and regressed to a child-like temperament. His former sexuality has been lost; he now regularly engages in sex with Ellen.
Nimdok (a name AM gave him), who persuades the rest of the group to go on a hopeless journey in search of canned food. At times he is known to wander away from the group for unknown reasons, and returns visibly traumatized.
Ellen, the only woman. She claims to once have been chaste, that it was AM who altered her mind so that she became willing to be the group's shared prostitute. The others, at different times, both protect her and abuse her. According to Ted, she finds pleasure in sex only with Benny, because of his large penis. Described as having very dark skin, she is the only member of the group whose ethnicity or racial identity is explicitly mentioned by Ted.
Ted, the narrator and youngest of the group. He claims to be not at all altered, mentally, by AM, and that the other four hate him out of envy.

Thomas M. Disch - 334

Explanation of title
Most of the novel's characters live in a huge housing project at 334 East 11th Street, in Manhattan. The title also refers to the year 334 CE, during the later years of the Roman Empire; numerous comparisons are made between the decline of Rome and the future of the United States.
Plot summary
The future in 334 has brought few technological advances except for new medical techniques and recreational drugs. There have been no dramatic disasters, but overpopulation has made housing and other resources scarce; the response is a program of compulsory birth control and eugenics. A welfare state provides for basic needs through an all-encompassing agency called MODICUM, but there is an extreme class division between welfare recipients and professionals.
The novel consists of five independent novellas (previously published separately) with a common setting but different characters, and a longer sub-novel called "334" whose many short sections trace the members of a single family forward and backward in time. The sections are as follows:
"The Death of Socrates": A high-school student finds that, due to poor scores on his Regents Examinations and his father's health history, he has been permanently forbidden to have children; he searches for ways to get extra credit.
"Bodies": Porters at Bellevue Hospital moonlight as body-snatchers catering to a necrophiliac brothel. Their task is complicated by the desire of some patients to be cryonically preserved for a better future.
"Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire": A privileged government worker, trying to decide where to send her son to school, pursues a parallel existence in a hallucinogen-assisted role-playing game set in the year 334.
"Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come": A young professional man and woman face marital conflicts and parenthood, with several twists unique to the 2020s.
"Angouleme": A group of highly educated prepubescent children decides to commit a gratuitous murder in Battery Park.
"334": Vignettes of the Hanson family from 2021 to 2025.
Characters
Mrs. Hanson: An elderly widow living at 334. Mother to Lottie, Shrimp, and Boz.
Lottie Hanson: An unemployed single mother living at 334.
Shrimp Hanson: Considered genetically desirable for her unusual intelligence, therefore has a free pass from the government to have children, although she is actually motivated by a fetish for artificial insemination.
Boz Hanson: Unemployed, former resident of 334, managed to leave by marrying Milly.
Milly Holt: A professional sex demonstrator for the high schools. Was Birdie's girlfriend, now married to Boz.
Ab Holt: Manages the morgue at Bellevue Hospital. Millie's father.
Birdie Ludd: A high-school student living at 334.
Frances Schaap: A prostitute living at 334. Like many people in the 2020s, she has lupus.
Alexa: A MODICUM administrator, responsible for the Hansons.
Tancred: Alexa's son.
Amparo: Lottie's daughter.
Little Mister Kissy Lips: Son of a television executive, classmate of Tancred and Amparo.
Major themes
Like much of Disch's fiction, 334 is both a prediction of future trends and a satirical portrait of the contemporary United States. Its bureaucratic city-state is an exaggeration of aspects of liberal programs that began in the 1960s, combining their best hopes (material need has been eliminated) with the worst suspicions of their detractors (the lower class remains uneducated and without aspirations; their social workers mostly regard them with contempt). Its portrayal of other forms of social change is similarly ambiguous: same-sex relationships gain acceptance, but suffer the same pathologies as traditional ones; sexual frankness (and free TV pornography) does not relieve neurosis; the intellectual pursuits of the professional class devolve into endless solipsistic therapy. The only institution that the characters feel some loyalty to is the nuclear family.
Political action is touched on only indirectly in the novel; most of the characters are so politically uninvolved that "Democrat" and "Republican" are used only as sexual slang. (Ironically, rather than having a conservative connotation, "Republican" means "homosexual"; the Democratic Party has traditionally had an overwhelming majority in New York.) Although almost nothing is mentioned of the world outside of New York, the U.S. is embroiled in a Vietnam-like war in Burma—but rather than a draft, young people are pressured into the military by economic means. A group of student activists passionately debates the system's injustice, but takes no action, while a nameless character crashes a plane as a protest but elicits no response other than a brief TV story.
In the third novella, "Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire", several members of the professional class suggest that the U.S., like Rome, is a superpower in irreversible decline, whose citizens can no longer hope to make meaningful contributions to the world but should simply seek advantageous positions for themselves. The novel leaves as an open question whether this is an accurate judgement, or a self-fulfilling prophecy by the society's elite.
Allusions/references to other works
The killing of a hospital patient by adjusting life-support equipment is referred to as "burking", a reference to the murderers Burke and Hare.
The children in "Angouleme" name their intended victim Alyona Ivanovna, after Raskolnikov's first victim in Crime and Punishment.
Miss Kraus, the delusional sign-carrying woman who frequents Battery Park in "Angouleme", was an actual person alive at the time Disch wrote the novel.
Literary significance and criticism
334 was selected by David Pringle as one of the 100 best science-fiction novels written since World War II.
Samuel R. Delany's The American Shore (1978) is a book-length critical essay on the novella "Angouleme"; Delany argues that despite the lack of any scientific themes in "Angouleme", its speculative setting makes it inherently science fiction.