Small World Part 1

First off, I would like to say that the first part of "Small World" reminded me a lot of "Brave New World" and "The Giver." I know that "Brave New World" and "The Giver" all took place in very unique societies, but I felt that they all had a common secret that they were all in on, and that they were all gathered together for. Starting off "Small World," it seemed as though all of these professors and teachers had gathered together for a specific reason beyond their training. They all had very prestigious degrees, and some came back to this "conference" even after they stopped teaching. It just reminded me a lot of these other two books.

4) Angelica is a very centered and interesting character in "Small World." She is the main interest for many of the men at the conference, and seems very out of place. She is younger than a lot of people at the conference and she is very flirtatious. I think that her character is supposed to be more of one for entertainment purposes, the main love interest. She specializes in romantic literature and it seems that if we compared her to a common medieval character, she would be the young maiden that those fawn after. Persse is taken to her because of her looks and supposed popularity at the conference. Originally, he knows nothing about her and only a day or so after meeting and talking to her, he proclaims that he is "in love" which is an overstatement to say the least.

5) I personally loved the characters of Morris Zapp and Philip Swallow. I thought that both characters were very animated and really served as a humerus part in the story. I loved the scene where Persse sees Angelica for the first time and he comments about how Swallow seemed to be looking at her breasts, when really he was looking at her name tag. Both characters seemed to be very engulfed in the image of sex, even as old men. Zapp's lecture, to be precise, was probably my favorite part of the reading. I will speak about that in the next question. But I just thought that Swallow and Zapp were very animated and characters that were meant to be taken seriously, but could be laughed at while reading.

6) This scene was my favorite part of the story. Zapp compared language and reading to strip teasing. While reading it, I actually understood and agreed with what he had to say. It says, "the attempt to peer into the very core of a text, to possess once and for all its meaning, is vain- it is only ourselves that we find there, not the work itself" (27). It talked about how the text tells us what we need to know, but will never say it blatantly and cannot be possessed. It is all like a strip tease. I thought that it really blatantly said what language and reading was like, and I think that a lot of people overreacted when hearing it.