Winston Churchill once said “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” (Churchill). When he said this he was coining a term that would be used in history books decades later. He was of course referring to the complete separation of one major city into two smaller separately governed cities by the Berlin Wall. In China Mieville's novel, The City and The City, we see a similar situation in which the two fictional and completely opposite cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma are separated by a wall. Not a physical wall but an ideological wall; one that is so ingrained into the existence of the cities themselves that it might as well be physical made of brick and mortar. I believe that Mieville is using these two cities and the wall between them as a symbol for the Cold War and the chaos created by the Berlin Wall.
To fully understand the symbolism one must take a look at
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each aspect of the story separately starting with the individual cities. Due to the fact that the story itself starts in Besźel it is the ideal place to start describing the symbolism and how it pertains to the Cold War. Besźel is Eastern European which we can assume due to names as well as accents of its citizens and how they are dressed. In the novel the protagonist Borlú makes minute observations about many of the people in both Besźel and Ul Qoma as is his job as detective but it is these observations that give us a full view of the people of these two cities. When Borlú talks to a group of prostitutes about the murdered girl he describes their appearance as “She was dark, Semitic or Turkish somewhere back. Her Besź was unaccented” (Mieville 19). Of the two cities Besźel is democratic and capitalist much like West Berlin in the Cold War. However the government corrupt, and slowly burning itself out as it desperately looks for American investment dollars with which to reverse its suffering. Ul Qoma on the other hand is Middle Eastern, communist, and due to its massive jump from the 19th century to the 21st in only a few short decades the city's economy is thriving as can be seen when Borlú describes Ul Qoma’s buildings saying After mild censure from UNESCO, a finger-wag tied to some European Investment, Ul Qoma had recently passed zoning laws to stop the worst of the architectural vandalism it's boomtime occasione. Some of the ugliest recent works had even been demolished, but still the traditional baroque curlicues of Ul Qoma’s heritage sights were made almost pitiful by their giant young neighbours. Like all Besźel dwellers, I had become used to shopping in the foreign shadows of foreign success (Mieville 135) This excerpt from the novel shows that Ul Qoma is doing so well that they are actually tearing down buildings they find unattractive because they are more worried about public opinion and looks than money. Through this look at solely the basics of the cities we see that despite the successfulness of the socio economic policies of the cities, Mieville is quite accurately portraying East and West Berlin during the Cold War. It is through this glance that we see exactly how Mieville added his own little spin onto the trouble created by the Berlin Wall due to his belief in the ideologies of Socialism and his rejection of Capitalism. After looking at the cities themselves it is only logical to next look at the laws governing the interaction of the two cities. In Mieville's novel there are boundaries between the two cities that are not only invisible and incredibly confusing due to their crosshatched nature but they are also easy to miss. According to Dhatt the Chief Inspector working with Borlú in Ul Qoma If you want to take a tourist day or two, but you're strictly a tourist when you're on your own. Cool? It might be better if you didn't. I mean shit, no one's going to stop you, but we all know it's harder to cross over without a guide; you could even breach without meaning to, and then what? (Mieville 136-137) This shows us that these lines are so opaque it's sometimes impossible for people who know the rules to follow them, we can see this specifically when Dhatt says “you could even breach without meaning to” (Mieville 137). These lines represent a wall just as impenetrable as the one dividing Berlin and have the border guards to prove it. In Mieville's novel we are introduced to Breach, a mysterious organization thats act as border patrol, essentially these men and women who operate in the shadows and are only seen when you breach represent the KGB and other measures the Russians had of enforcing the wall in Berlin. The only difference being that these men and women do not care weather you are in the east or the west only that you breached. Daniel Hourigan author of the article, Breach! The Law’s Jouissance in Miéville’s The City & The City, refers to Breach as “the borders and points of overlap are policed by a dark, shadowy agency known as Breach whose judgement is final and severe” (Hourigan 2) . Hourigan describes Breach as many people would describe Russia's Secret Police as shadows appearing out of nowhere and taking you away at the slightest transgression. Mieville expands on this description when Borlú commits breach and he is immediately enveloped and taken away before he can fully realize what is going on. In the novel Mieville writes ‘Breach’ I thought it was the shocked declaration of those who had witnessed the crime. But unclear figures emerged where there had been no purposeful motion instants before, only the milling of no one's, the aimless and confused, and those suddenly appeared newcomers with faces so motionless I hardly recognized them as faces were saying the word. It was statement of both crime and identity. ‘Breach’ A grim-featured something gripped me so that there was no way I could break out, had I wanted to. I glimpsed dark shapes draped over the body of the killer I had killed [...] ‘Breach’ and something touched me and I went under into black, out of walking and all awareness, to the sound of that word (Mieville 237-238) This description of Breach not only instills the fear and danger that came with the secret police of the Cold War but it also instills doubt, Like the KGB, Breach is an organization that is ever present even without knowledge of their current location. The fact that they are everywhere and can see and hear everything you do instills self doubt as much as fear due to the fact that you can never know what to say and are constantly looking over your shoulder. In order to breach one must either pass through the barriers between Ul Qoma and Besźel or see or hear the other city. Due to the sharing of space by the two cities many highways and thoroughfares are in both Ul Qoma and Besźel, this would seem to make everyday travel difficult due to the laws governing the prohibition of seeing or hearing anything from the adjacent city. According to mieville You cannot train yourself to successfully and sustainedly unsee and unhear you do them all the time, but they also fail, repeatedly, and you cheat, repeatedly, in all sorts of small ways.
The book mentions that several times. It is absolutely about absolute fidelity to those particular urban protocols, exaggerations or extrapolations of the ones that I think are all around us all the time in the real world; but it's also about cheating them, and failing them, and playing a little fast and loose, which I think is an inextricable part of such norms. (Mieville)
In this interview Mieville discusses the impossibility of completely unseeing and unhearing despite the insistence from characters of the book that they have not breached. Herein lies the fear of breaking the rules and therefore breaching. In Cold War Berlin it was not necessary to unsee or unhear however it was fairly difficult to hear or see anything over the massive wall and even if you could see over it it was never a good idea to tempt fate and be caught staring at the wrong
person. Like Cold War Berlin, Mieville's fictional cities make it illegal to see or hear but at the same time make it very hard to actually get caught doing so, this is why Mieville describes the impossibility of the act and the fact that many citizens cheat. Carl Freedman author of the article, From Genre to Political Economy Miéville’s The City & The City and Uneven Development, describes the act of unseeing and unhearing as all in the minds of the citizens and that they not only learned to unsee from a young age but they also have to constantly be watching when he says “Besź and Ul Qoman motorists have to be careful not to crash into one another.[...] seems to imply that the dimness has some physical or technical origin. In fact, it is wholly psychological and learned; that is to say, wholly constructed in the minds of the Besź and Ul Qoman citizens.” (Freedman 2). Using the evidence given to us in Mieville's novel as well as the outside sources we can easily come to the conclusion that not only was Mieville using this novel as a symbol, he was specifically using it as a symbol of Berlin during the Cold War divided amongst itself unable to see or hear what is on the other side of the wall and constantly scared of the repercussions that might occur should they cross it.
My first reason why it was not worth the costs is the wall actually did not keep people out. It was not very protective. The wall affected so many things. It affected life styles, people's daily routine. It also affected families. (Doc. E). The wall was not one big long wall. It stretched three hundred miles to the west and there was a watchtower beyond the wall end. But there were still places that were not protected by the wall. The Xiongnu could just walk around the wall and them come in and invade. People may think that they are fine because the wall is protecting them but they need to be aware that there are spots that are not protected by the wall. They would spend so much money on this wall to protect people when it really does not protect them that well (Doc. D). One of the most important reasons is that they had to pay the Xiongnu to stay out and not invade them. They paid them with Silk Thread and Silk Fabric. The amount they gave them from the year 51 BCE to one BCE they almost tripled the amount! It increased a lot. If they had to pay them to stay out them that proves that the Great Wall does not work.
He describes the physical wall in Berlin and the wall of restrictions that divides the rest of the country as a scar, insinuating that it is ugly, unnatural, and undesirable. In the third paragraph, he creates a connection between the people of the east and west by describing them as, “fellow countrymen,” and then by saying, “Es gibt nu rein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.] ” This connection poses an enthymeme that the people on both sides of the wall have common goals: freedom, security, and prosperity. Reagan then links these goals to the rest of the world by saying, “Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German separated from his fellow men.
Berlin and West Berlin but was located deep inside the Soviet controlled zone. Then, in 1961, the Soviet government built a wall which separated the two halves of the city. It was not until the 1980s that cold war tensions eased. through the glasnost (openness to public debate) policies of soviet leaders. Mikhail Gorbachev.
...ndowing destroys this barrier because it allows the characters to know more. During the post 9/11 time period, everyone was suspicious of everyone else. Baudrillard says, “The faultless mastery of this clandestine style of operation is almost as terroristic as the spectacular act of September 11, since it casts suspicion on any and every individual” (20). The “clandestine style of operation” that Baudrillard refers to is how the terrorists could be people who are walking amongst us, living similar lives. Being able to see the reactions of the people gives insight to what the people may actually be thinking and that’s why windowing is important.
Roger Angell 's "Over the Wall" is a memoir that he wrote about his wife that she passed away, leaving him alone in this world. The memoir is filled with his experience with his wife and his feelings towards his wife. When he starts talking about his wife, he realized that people whom he knew no longer lives in this world. Roger Angell made the readers imagine he is in front of them and talking about his personal experience. He wanted us to know that people that we love is gone in the blink of an eye. Literary nonfiction form of his memoir shows the readers that he missed his wife, but grief won 't help anything. “Over the wall” is an emotional story, as it reaches out to us with few deep messages of loneliness, feelings, and memories.
In the short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper," by Charlotte Gilman, the setting contributes to the narrator's insanity. When she first sees the house, she loves it. She thinks the house will be a perfect place to recover from her "nervous condition," but that does not happen because her husband confines her to the bedroom so that her health will improve. The narrator's mental illness deteriorates to the point of insanity due to her isolation in the bedroom, with only the yellow wallpaper to look at that she considers "repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow,strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight" (106).
A seventh grader asks his dad about the eighties. Unfortunately his dad can't remember anything about the eighties;and the older sister helps him remember the past. “Berlin Wall Piece,” by Sam Shepard is a story where a small piece of concrete helps a crazy father remember his modern history. A theme for the story would be: how a small piece of history can bring back so many old memories and controversies. When the story first opens up, a seventh grader is interviewing his father for his social studies class. The father is being questioned by his own son or daughter. The story does not reveal the sex of the youngest child. The father is unaware of the past; he can't remember absolutely nothing. The youngest child is confused, and cannot understand why his father can't help him. The father explains to the child that there was nothing important going in the eighties. The most important and significant thing for his father was the birth of his two children and his wife. The rest of it was lies, trash, and insignificant things the world had offered him. The truth was that nothing more matter to him than his children and wife. He had everything in the world he could ever wish for. The young child could not understand his fathers intentions to his answers. It was all a big mystery.
From the start of the book we are already introduced to the lack of privacy in everyday life “On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall…BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. (1-2). With the thought of always being watched, there was no freedom represented because it brings a sense of fear and hopelessness. One is watched 24/7 and there is no escaping because telescreens were implanted everywhere. It could receive information and had a transmitter that was simultaneous, any whisper any movement could be seen. There was never a way to know when they (Big Brother) would/ was looking at you and that is the fear they wanted you to feel. They could catch your thought crimes and that is what Thought Police needed.
Walls are built up all over the world. They have many purposes and uses. The most common use of a wall is to divide a region. One of these famous walls is the Berlin Wall, which was constructed in 1961. This Wall was erected to keep East Berlin out of West Berlin, and even America had its own wall well before this one. There were a few major differences though. America’s wall, in contrast, was not a physical one that kept capitalism from communism. America’s wall was of a psychological variety, and it spread across most of the nation. America’s wall was more of a curtain in the fact that one could easily pull it aside to see what behind it, but if one didn’t want to they didn’t. This curtain was what separated whites and blacks in America, and one famous writer, James Baldwin, felt there was a need to bring it down. He felt that one should bring it down while controlling his or her emotions caused by the division. One of the best places to see the bringing down of the curtain and the effects that it had on the nation is where the curtain was its strongest, in Birmingham, Alabama.
In conclusion Berlin Wall was an important milestone in the growth of the Cold War. It was the expansion that represented the thinking of a determined Communist system. Western Capitalism, which was more powerful, eventually defeated the system. The massive wall that did so much harm to a country was finally destroyed, and the people of Germany could now live the way they all wanted to live. They could live the life of freedom. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall East Germany has went through a lot of changes, and it still is not easy for all of the people in East Germany. But no matter how hard it is for the people of East Germany now, it is better than being alone and separated from their families, friends and rest of Europe.
The Berlin Wall ferociously slashed through the rights of the people of Germany. People have the right to go and live where they choose. Constructing a wall to trap and limit people was wrong. The people of Germany were oppressed economically and politically.
In this scenario, the building of the Wall was merely a precursor to the Soviet peace treaty, which would hand over control of Berlin’s access to East Germany, forcing either a Western recognition of East Germany, or a confrontation possibly leading to war. It appears, however, that Ulbricht was the only player who regarded the Wall in this manner. Khrushchev was still willing to keep the peace treaty and the ultimatum on the table, but was growing concerned that the United States and the West were not buckling under the pressure, and that Ulbricht’s path might lead more likely to the latter outcome. He thus began to back, slowly, away from confrontation over Berlin, just as he had in 1959 and ...
“I always feel like somebody's watching me and I have no privacy.” These are the famous lyrics from one of Michael Jackson's hit songs Somebody’s Watching Me. Now, back when this song was created, there was not as much worry about people constantly being watched by cameras, but it seems to fit in the problem that my generation is facing. In the book 1984, written by George Orwell, the society is always being watched through a device called a telescreen. The main character, Winston, has trouble adjusting to the life of always being monitored, and the fact that if you made one mistake you could be tortured or killed. This book was made in the late 1940’s and was written to show what the predicted future would be like. Many people who have read
[4] So termed becuae Hart's account equates the existence of rules with a certain kind of social practice. [5] Raz Practical Reasons and Norms p.56 [6] To be honest, I have not fully understood Kelsen to develop this argument further. I hope though to show you such a conclusion when I finally get to grips with all this material. Sorry, but I hope I am heading the right way with this!!
In his semi-autobiographical work Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood is often regarded as playing the part of a passive, emotionally detached, uninterested third party. This interpretation, encouraged by the first line in the passage, “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed” (9), is not what Isherwood intended. Instead, the last line of the passage is inherently more useful for understanding Isherwood’s intent: “Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed” (9).