Flatland, By Edwin A. Abbott

Flatland is a book by Edwin A. Abbott. The beginning of the book describes many of the different aspects of the world Flatland. Flatland is only two dimensions. The amount of sides that shapes have determine what class they belong to. The squares are lawyers, and pentagons are doctors. In flatland the shapes’ offspring also have greater amounts of sides. Triangles have quadrilaterals, quadrilaterals have pentagons, etc. Instead of shapes looking up to their parents and ‘praising’ them they look up to their children and grandchildren, because they are of a higher class due to their sides. In flatland in order to recognize each other they use a method of feeling each other for their different angles. They can also usually tell what class they
In this book the women are looked at as if they are mindless. All that they’re composed of are feelings. (Based on the year that this book was published, 1884, the author probably had these views on women. This is the main reason as to why I find this book repulsing.) In the book the author also says that the females are born one inch long and tall women grow to be twelve inches long. The houses that these shapes live in are pentagons. There is a door for the women to enter through and a different door for the men to enter through. In the second half of the book the main character is introduced. The main character is Square and he is from Flatland. In a dream Square visits three lands, Lineland, Pointland, and Spaceland. In Lineland everything/ everyone stays in a line. No one is able to move left or right. The way that the king communicates to his people is through sound. Square tries to explain flatland to the king, but he is unable to understand or have an idea of left and right. In pointland there was only one being and that was the king. The king was very vain and would not listen to Square about the other dimensions. Once Square is back to flatland he is visited by a character named