For this post I’ll be taking the position that Snow Crash is a Brechtian story and not a Hegelian one. I believe this debate is similar to the controversy of someone’s personality being the product of genetics or the environment one is raised in. Commonly referred to as nature versus nurture.
Brecht would be representing the nurture side of the controversy as Boal states, “On the other hand, for Brecht ‘human nature’ does not exist, and therefore nobody is what he is ‘just because.’” (pg. 96) An example of this in Snow Crash is the character Y.T. It seems as if her in your face attitude and her ability to get around authority figures comes from her job as a kourier. Y.T.’s mom however, has more of a passive personality and tries to avoid major confrontations as we can see Y.T.’s mom’s day to day life at work. Y.T.’s mom decides spend 14 to 15 minutes reading the memo on purpose in order to look like an efficient worker. Y.T.’s mom also always follows orders like the time when she was interrogated and was asked why Y.T. had broken the computer. She didn’t hesitate to tell the interrogater what she knew. This passive personality is nothing like Y.T.’s who is not one to follow customs or standard procedures.
Another example of Snow Crash being a Brechtian story is the people who live on the Raft where Y.T. is taken. When Y.T. gets there we can see that the people among the Raft have a distinct personality that is different from Y.T.’s. “She has always been a dirty scum dog of the highways, not one of these happy singalong types.” (324) From this quote we can see that people who have been living on the Raft for a long time seem kind of brainwashed.
i really like the comment about the nature vs. nurture you added that Brecht represents nurture. i have to believe that Brecht is right because he is more real life realistic when it comes to this story which is completely opposite of the theme of snow crash.. i think we need a little bit more reality after reading a story like this...
ReplyDeleteI like how you compare the mother and daughter in this book when it dealing with whether this being a Brechtian story. If it werent, then these two figures would be acting the same as one another because the mom raised Y.T. therefore making Y.T. a product of her. You arent who are you just because, or by what your parents raised you to be. You are shaped by the world around you, and when you use the examples of how their jobs shape their personalites and the things they do in their day to day life you can see that there are outside forces that are affecting the people they are becoming.
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