Flatland Essay (안수하 중 1)

 

 

* 다음은 1개월 정도 사고 훈련을 받은 수하가 쓴 첫 번째 영어 에세이이다. 앞으로 두 세 번 정도 가이드에 따라 에세이를 작성해 본 후 학생 별로 다른 에세이들을 쓰게 된다. 아직 검토가 끝나지 않은 초벌 상태의 에세이임을 밝혀 둔다. 따라서 오타나 어법에 맞지 않는 표현이 들어 있을 수 있다.

 

Upward, not Northward

Soo ha Ahn (Pyeongcheon Middle School)

 

We of this generation commonly believe that the world revolves around what we can see with  our bare eyes. However, the world actually consists of things that you can’t see but are equally important as what we can actually see. For example, we cannot identify oxygen and human body cells with the naked eye, but we can still know that they exist by looking at scientific evidence. But how about god? There is no scientific proof at all on whether god exists or not, and there is a heated debate going on between people about the existence of god as well. In the 19^th century, the number of people that believed in god have rapidly decreased, and this incident worried many people, especially clergies. Today we are going to talk about Edwin Abbott, who was the author of ‘flatland’ and was a clergy himself. The people losing their trust of god worried Abbott a lot, and he tried to prove to the people that god existed, using science. This lead to the publication of Flatland, one of the most famous books that ever existed.

  

Edwin Abbott was an amazing student that received good grades and countless praises from his instructors. He entered St. John’s college in 1857 and became a priest a few years later. After he left Cambridge, Abbott worked as headmaster of the City of London School for 24 years after the former headmaster of the school, Dr. Mortimer, retired. Due to his amazing qualities as a teacher(headmaster), the City of London School, which was a perfectly wonderful school at that time, reached even higher standards when Edwin Abbott was headmaster. Abbott himself retired at age 50, but he had a reason for retiring at such a surprisingly young age. He had retired so that he could devote some more time to his literary efforts. Edwin was a very skilled writer; he had published a variety of books containing deep knowledge and understanding, and the book ‘Flatland’ is the representative of these books.

 

‘Flatland’ is a world where the shapes are judged by the number of sides they have. Triangles, the kind with the least sides, are workers, while squares are of middle, and circles are of high class. The speaker of the story(a square) meets a sphere in his dreams and realizes that there is a third dimension. The square later considers the possibility that there may be a world that consists of four or more dimensions, but all the other shapes and figures find the square’s opinion ridiculous, and so they put him in jail.

 

 

(Reference : wikipedia)

 

 

‘Flatland’ might look like a common fiction book that covers some aspects of math and science, but the book actually depicts how the England society looked like in the 19^th century. By making the women and the men of the society pass through different doors, people can infer that the discrimination between men and women at the time were immense. Moreover, the appearance of the sphere, a godly figure that nobody really believed in, implies that god might really exist. ‘Flatland’ was written in the 19^th century, which was a time when the interest and attention that people had shown towards god was decreasing. People can infer from this information that Abbott(he was a clergy at the time) was desperate to prove to people that god might exist, by depicting the sphere as a godly figure.    

  

Abbott has tried to prove to his readers that god actually exists. However, there is a lot of controversy going on about how he did it. In Abbott’s story, the shapes of the second dimension became certain that the sphere existed after he visited their world. In other words, Abbott wrote his book by assuming that there really was a godly figure. Therefore, the existence of god would only be proven to us if god visited earth himself, if we relate to the story.

 

A great deal of people these days believe in numerous religions. However, a good many people do not have a religion, and there is no responsibility for them to truly believe in god, because not believing in something does not mean that the person is not ethical. Therefore, it is not our duty to believe in god as Abbott’s book required us to. Even though ‘Flatland’ didn’t really help Abbott achieve what he wanted to (people to believe in god and turn their interest back to him), it is still one of the most popular and famous books today, for two main factors. ‘Flatland’ depicts how the England society in the 19^th century looked like in an easy and simple way, which helped students to get a better idea of how the society was like in the past. Moreover, the book also gives students a broader overview of the world by indicating that there might also be a newer dimension that was not found before.