This book felt like a satire in many ways.

Even though this book was written so long ago,

many of the criticisms are quite relevant today. The unfair treatment of women is still a problem

that some people struggle with. Also, the idea of being defined by the number of sides you have

correlates to being defined by how much money you have or what class you were born into. This

system just doesn’t make sense and is unethical. Maybe instead people should be judged by their

character and behavior as opposed to how much money they have. A similar problem arose in

the book when a woman committed suicide after learning the man she married was not of as high

of a social class as he made it seem. Maybe people should be themselves in order to find the right

person. Then there’s the people who sit at the top; the virtual circles who represent the

government and people in power. These characters honestly remind me of most modern

politicians who talk a lot about reform but never actually seem to enact change. They just find

ways to stay in power. Perhaps the biggest issue Abbott seemed to be criticizing the idea that

people will only believe what they see. When the square was in Lineland, it was so clear to him

how Flatland worked, but it was not clear to the line people because they had never seen it

before. Then when the square is introduced to the sphere, the square struggles to picture a world

of three dimensions and violently fights the idea until the sphere physically shows him such a

world exists. Then the square sees a three-dimensional world as obvious and believes he can

convince others of its existence. However, he is thrown in jail at the end of the story as the rest of

the people in Flatland are just as closed-minded as he used to be. I think the point Abbott was

trying to get across is there are things that exist in the universe that we as humans cannot

comprehend. The fact that we can’t see certain things does not mean they don’t exist and does

not mean we shouldn’t believe in them. The medium Abbott uses is dimensions, saying there

could be many more dimensions in the world that we as humans cannot comprehend.