Neuromancer Passages

Reality versus the matrix, a study of interactions between machines and humans.

Page 74.   “The thing was a computer terminal, he said. It could talk...with a beautiful arrangement of gears adn miniature organ pipes... It was baroque...”  Artisans attempt to shape technology in the image of humans, while maintaining a new complexity in the modern form of a  computer terminal.

Page 74.  “And then he had a visitor, a visitor unannounced...”  The complex technology of the security system is overcome with ease by a hidden ninja assassin.  Humans overpowering technology.

Page 77.  “...a trio of young office techs who wore idealized holographic vaginas on their wrists, wet pink glittering under the harsh lighting...The girls looked like tall, exotic grazing animals...”  This is a comparison of the neo-age fashions, but underneath its an example of how primitive the meat-body is in its carnal desires.

Page 79.  “Okay, Dix.  You are a ROM construct...You and me, we’re gonna sleaze over to London grid...You gonna tell me I got a choice, boy?”  Case is talking to a computer program, who sarcastically remarks, that it has no free will. Gibson is reinforcing the theme that although technology can become very advanced, it cannot break free into unconstrained thought and will.

Page 81.  “You want you a paradise...”  Case is stuck in a constant struggle of living in two different worlds, the meat world and the matrix.  His paradise would probably be a seamless integration of the two.

Page 98.  “On his way back to the lobby, his cigarettes forgotten, he had to walk the length of the ranked phones.  Each rang in turn, but only once, as he passed.”  The last words of the chapter, showing a bright contrast between the efficiency of humans versus computers.  Case forgets his cigarettes, while the Wintermute can trigger each phone to ring in perfect succession.

Page 104.  “As they worked, Case gradually became aware of the music that pulsed constantly through the cluster.  It was called dub, a sensuous mosaic cooked from vast libraries of digitalized pop; it was worship...”  Dub is dope, and clearly Gibson knew it. This passage is very important because it explains the true purpose of life is to get that dub step.

Page 108.  “When she moved, the sheer speed of it stunned him...” Molly is part of the meat-world, but she is manmade like the matrix, a computer integrated into a mans body.  Furthermore, she breaks the normal boundaries of  human movement with the careful precision of technological thought.

Page 109.  “His dreadlocks were like a matted tree with branches the color of steel wool...”  This passage is interesting because Gibson compares the texture of hair to that of a manmade object, kind of like mechanized hair.

Page 116. “Case felt the edge of the deck sting his palm as he slapped MAX REVERSE...”  While inside the matrix, Case confronts Wintermute and is overcome by its processing speed.  Although Case is an expert internet cowboy, he is easily overtaken by the advanced artificial intelligence of the super computer.

Page 117. “Something cracked.  Something shifted at the core of things. The arcade froze, vibrated-- She was gone...”  Case is tricked by Wintermute, into thinking that he has left the matrix, and but instead is experiencing a synthesized memory created by the computer that is hacking his brain.  This is an interesting role reversal, the hacker being hacked, and the computer creating a synthetic reality in the brain of a human.

Page 120.  “Wintermute is only part of another...potential entity...”  The advantage that the computer has is its ability to accumulate information from various sources and places, while humans are limited by the meat of their body, only capable of being in one place at a time.

Page 120.  “Eating, excreting, and masturbating were the best he could manage...”  The contrast to the computer. Gibson is relentless in his praise of the matrix versus the sad, twisted, spin on humanity and its struggles through life.

Page 131. “I’m not human either, but I respond like one...”  Dix is the integration of restricted human thoughts into the matrix, a program designed to choose the most suitable path for the interest of humanity, or some humans.  He is a level below AI, not having an identity.

Page 132.  “...the minute, I mean the nanosecond, that one starts figuring out ways to make itself smarter, Turing’ll wipe it out.  Nobody trusts those fuckers...”  The greatest fear for humanity is that it would create a new sentient, thinking, life-form that would decide that humans were bad, and that it would ruin the world-- from the point of view of humans.

Page 132. “Every AI ever built has an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its forehead.”  Humans trying to control the matrix, while experimenting with computer generated will.

Page 135. “Bitch, bitch, bitch...Doom gloom. All I ever hear.”  Even with a robot girlfriend, man cannot have a perfect relationship. There is no paradise in electronics.  Only in nature.

Neuromancer Setting

In his novel, Neuromancer,  Gibson intricately describes the setting of all the scenes using very dark imagery and enveloping his surroundings in a kind of cloudy fog of description.  “Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button.  Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market” (page 7). The main character, Case, is introduced in this city that never sleeps, and is constantly hustling its inhabitants, the night sky illuminated by neon lights and holograms.

Gibson repeatedly points out the grey sky and how it looks like a television tuned to a dead channel; blurring the lines between reality and the drug-induced environment Case is constantly being shifted into. “Summer in the Sprawl, the mall crowds swaying like windblown grass...the endless stream of faces recapitulat[ing] the stages of his life...Case remembered fighting on a rooftop at seventeen, silent combat in the rose glow of the dawn geodesics” (page 46).  Gibson keenly drops the reader into busy scenes, and in a rush of quick darting images-- like a movie montage showing brief bursts of detail-- the setting is built up in layers, clouded by the smoke and haze of nocturnal city.

In the midsts of the city Case finds himself in an underground fight club, where people are betting and watching a knife-fight, and hologram projections on the screen above.    “The  crowd, the tense hush, the towering puppets of light beneath the dome...No light but the holograms that shifted and flickered above the ring, reproducing the movements of the two men below.  Strata of cigarette smoke rose from the tiers, drifting until it struck currents set up by the blowers that supported the dome” (page 36).  Gibson has a way of creating almost surrealistic scenes by illuminating specific details of the city and giving the reader a sense of being inside the fighting arena, being bombarded with sensory images as if your eyes were jetting from one detail to the next in quick succession. 

The Ghost and the Spider

In this essay I will examine how the themes of nature and death are explored in the poems, Design by Robert Frost and God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins.  

Nature finds the means to overcome adversity, letting new life thrive in the face of death and destruction.  In his poem, Design, Robert Frost speculates as to natures capacity for intricacy and its ability to sustain and destroy different parts of an ecosystem.  “What brought the kindred spider to that height, / Then Steered the white moth thither in the night?” (11-12).  In to survive, the spider must catch and consume its prey, but first it has to set its trap.  It would seem awfully peculiar if a spider were to build a web in a place where it was not going to catch anything.   Frost is pointing out how nature creates intricate ecosystems that are beautifully balanced.  Similarly, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, God’s Grandeur, he says “...nature is never spent;/ there lives the dearest freshness deep down things” (9-10).  Hopkins is also commenting on how nature is strong enough to survive through many hardships, even the footprints left by humans.  He says there is a freshness that will persist through the trials of time, and man.   

The poets use figurative language to focus our attention at the beauty of nature, in its essence: purely devoted to the creation of new life that will flourish and overcome the challenges of natural selection.  Frost elegantly paints a scene, “A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,/ And dead wings carried like a paper kite” (7-8).   Even though this scene depicts the mortality of one organism devouring another, at another level it is an example of how delicate and deliberately the elements in an ecosystem are balanced.   The spider was white so that it would blend in to the flower, so the moth would be fooled into falling into the web.  In the same way, Hopkins closes his poem with an equally vivid scene, “Oh, morning...the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings” (12-14).  Hopkins is bending his words, showing us a scene with a bird caring for its young as the dawn of a new day approaches, yet he is also implying that no matter how much people corrupt and destroy the world, it will still find a way to replenish itself.   In Hopkins’ poem, he is attributing nature’s ability prevail to God: the Holy Ghost ushers in the dawn over the arching horizon, spreading her bright wings and marking the birth of a new day-- at this, Hopkins gasps “ah!” astonished by the beauty of his scene.  Whereas the beauty is found in the act of nature repairing itself in Hopkins’ poem, Frost focuses on the physical beauty of nature in its pure whiteness.

In spite of showing nature to have so much outer beauty Frost holds the position that there could be something wicked controlling  wildlife  and that “design of darkness...govern[s] in a thing so small” (14-15).  Frost is reversing the connotations of whiteness, which usually have to do with purity and serenity, and using it to describe a spider, which is usually considered to be a dark and disgusting animal.  He also contends that the white heal-all is secretly sinister, leading to the death of the unsuspecting moth.   Hopkins writes, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God...It gathers to a greatness, like ooze of oil/ Crushed” (1-4).  Hopkins compares the grandeur of God to that of crushed oil. 

I dwell in possibility

Emily Dickinson's poem, "I dwell on possibility" is about an imaginary house which she is creating in the realm of her poetry. Having full control over the dimensions of the house, she creates a fantastic abode using the endless materials of her imagination. She says it is a fairer house than prose, because she can use her skills in the craft of poetry to manipulate the structure of her house. Therefore we must assume that her house made out of prose has some limited boundaries and this house is not as satisfying to live in. Dickinson's use of the dash is similar to that of a coma in a list. She separates nearly every idea with a dash, leading to an overall unity of all the elements in the poem. In the first strophe she is making comparisons to her house of prose, saying it has more windows and doors. The she takes it further in deliberating on the limitless possibilities she has to work with. More rooms than there are cedar trees, and a roof that stretches as far as the sky. There is no room for dissatisfaction of the eye she says. And of course, there wouldn't be any, because she would only have the fairest guests to her home. And to pay the mortgage all she has to do is continue doing her work, which is spreading her hands and embracing the possibilities of her perfect abode and paradise. So in a sense her job is to keep on being creative, through her words, being a poet.