Thursday, April 3, 2008
Prompt 10
I think that drugs/addiction is an interesting theme that is prevalent in Neuromancer. Throughout the book we see this common theme of drug use among all the characters, as well as various other addictions. Case is obviously an avid user of drugs, constantly trying to escape from his body and the real world. But when he is not using drugs, we also see that he is addicted to cyber space, which allows him the same out of body experience. By the end of the novel, we see how both of these addictions have taken a physical toll on his body. These addictions also affect his relationship with those around him, primarily molly, also an addict of many sorts. In the novel we find Molly to be addicted to several things including drugs, cyber space and body modifications. All of these things alter her body both mentally and physically. We see how Molly is especially affected by drug use through Case’s eyes when he explains he "watched her personality fragment, calving like an iceberg, splinters drifting away, and finally he'd seen the raw need, the hungry armature of addiction," (Gibson 8). Case and Molly are constantly seeing the world through a skewed perspective. It’s as if their society is so technologically advanced that normal unaltered living is no longer entertaining for them, so they are constantly stimulating their body and minds with external things, leading to addiction. This problem is also observed with Molly’s body modifications, her natural body is no longer good enough when body modifications can “upgrade” her. She constantly modifies her body as an addiction because one is never enough, which was also something we saw prevalent with tattoos and piercings in our last unit.
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2 comments:
I think that is really interesting about the addictions. It is interesting that Case uses drugs and cyberspace as addictions, but he doesn’t have any body modifications. I guess this makes sense because he separates himself from his body. He wouldn’t need modification because he does not care much about it. Molly, on the other hand, doesn’t want to escape her body. She uses modifications as her addiction. For some reason when I think of addictions, I don’t think of modifications and drugs in the same area. I don’t know why that is. I guess because the modifications in the book are so extreme that I can’t picture them in the same context. But your argument makes total sense for the types of addictions that Molly and Case decide to do, either to stay use the body or get away from it.
I think that this post was very well-written and observant. I love how you pointed out that their addications lead to more addictions. When Case was unable to jack in to cyberspace anymore, he turned to drugs and became addicted. When he was able to jack in again, he became re-addicted to cyberspace and was still addicted to drugs. Then you see him almost addicted Molly. In all these addictions, he is trying to escape reality, but he becomes so far separated from reality that he eventually cannot return. I also really like how you pointed out tattoos in correlation with addication because when we interviewed Chris at Southside Tattoos, he pointed out to us that body modification is addicting.
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