Snow Crash makes me feel excited, angry, and fearful. The beginning of the book made me feel excited because of the Deliverator’s car with the orange lights, speeding through backyards in a race against the clock and landing in a pool. Y.T. has an exciting job as a Kourier, and she is fearless and adventurous. I feel angry at mankind for still having racism: "WHITE PEOPLE ONLY. NON-CAUCASIANS MUST BE PROCESS,” reads a sign on a gate into one of the city-states. I am fearful for the future because this all seems not so unlikely. The idea of dividing America into city-states with their own constitutions, border, laws and cops (p.6) seems likely to me. The Metaverse and Avatars described are very similar to the game World of Warcraft, and I can totally believe something like the Metaverse could exist right now.
The protagonist is Hiro, and I can empathize in some ways with him. Hiro lives in a storage unit, but he doesn’t seem unhappy. I empathize most with Y.T. when she goes to jail. I feel what she feels more than I feel what Hiro feels because I have more in common with Y.T. She is a young woman who likes adventure. I feel excited yet fearful for Y.T. when she is riding her skateboard around harpooning cars. I like to read books or watch movies about women who are strong and brave and stand up for themselves. Although Y.T. is young, she is brave because she rides around on her board and harpoons cars like the Deliverator’s that are going 100+ kilometers per hour! Reading about daring women is exciting and inspiring to me.
I feel mad when she gets arrested, because the cops make her pay 750 billion dollars to take her to the Hoosegow instead of the Clink (a hotel for prisoners instead of jail), but the Hoosegow is all filled up and they take her to jail anyway. I feel pity and embarrassed for Y.T. when she is taken to jai; “’Better take her uniform-all that gear.’ The manager looks at Y.T., trying not to let his gaze travel sinfully up and down her body.”(p. 53). This makes me feel embarrassment because the cops are all grown men and Y.T. is a young woman. The reason I love her so much is because she is so strong-willed! She stands up for herself, “she does not get upset because she knows that they are expecting her to. A Kourier has to establish space on the pavement. They mentally assign you a little box in the lane, assume you will stay there, can’t handle it when you leave that little box. Y.T. is not fond of boxes.” She does not let the cops “put her in a box” or make her follow rules. She unzips her clothes and they make her zip back up. (p.53) I love that she does this, because I like to see women standing up for themselves, and it gives me courage to do the same.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
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You make a great point here. it seems impossible to go “there” until you think about how far we’ve already come. It is eerie how things seem sooooo far fetched until you really think about it and realize that the Metaverse is only one or two levels away from where we are today. World of Warcraft is a great example. How about the internet? How about instant messaging? How about Xbox Live? All of these things are spookily similar to the Metaverse.
ReplyDeleteYou also mention the privatizing of government into separate city-states and such. Very interesting stuff! How about the United States government already privatizing certain aspects of defense with companies like Blackwater? Gosh I hope this isn’t the world our kids grow up in.
I like your comparison of the Metaverse to some of the online videogames that we already have today. In Snow Crash Stephenson talks about how the Metaverse is sort of an escape for individuals from the real world that they are in. I think that already internet time (including online videogames) is becoming that. It is interesting to see the kind of extension on reality that this book creates.
ReplyDeleteI also find it interesting that you seem to have such specific and diverse emotions concerning different aspects of the book. I have always been a pretty avid reader, but it is rarity that I am able to really get into a “class assigned” book. It would be interesting to analyze why we are able to get emotionally tied up in some pieces of literature, but not in others. Is it the language, the character evolution, the story? It sounds like you were most able to empathize with a particular character that you felt similarity to. I wonder if I would have felt more connection with this book’s characters if I had seen more similarities between them and myself.