Alright so I hope you guys checked out Part I! The second part of this blog revolves around all the more “abstract” portions of the book. Again, I think they all for the most part relate to the biological purpose of life, which is to survive and reproduce.
Some random examples:
Real-life Barbie (p.260): Sure there are some cultural and psychological reasons as to why she wanted to make herself look like Barbie (a common standard of feminine physical attractiveness even if she is just a doll), but a simple common sense fact is that physically attractive women have a better chance of passing on their genes than an ugly woman. Not only that, but women being the mate selectors of our species and men placing such a high value on beauty, now she has access to men with more status, money, etc who are willing to exchange these survival values to mate with her.
The list of extinct languages (sorry I couldn’t find the page number): Survival of the fittest. The languages that displayed the most adaptive value and spread to the most people survived and the ones that didn’t are now extinct. “Old words die out” (p.103)
Ok so now to tie it all together. All the random information about mollusks, and beauty pageants, and eugenics, etc relate to the story and in context to the idea that humans are in a way starting to be able to control their own evolution. We are able to abort off spring that display some genetic or “undesirable” abnormality, we are able to make ourselves more attractive and increase our chances for reproductive success, and we are able to purposefully sterilize people among many other things. From my perspective Tomasula is showing that through time and technology, essentially we will be to consciously select the ACGT’s of our species, and I think Circle’s story relates to all of these ideas in one way or another.
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