A Review of Flatland

Flatland is a 1884 English Novella written by Edwin Abbot Abbot. The story takes a satirical look at Victorian England society, using its own warped and exaggerated class system to comment on the discriminatory system of the time. In addition Flatland gives an interesting take on dimension and our perception of them, which to me was the most interesting part of the book.

The basic premise of Flatland is of dimensions. Most of the books plot is spent in Flatland, a two dimensional world, and more than half of the book is spent merely describing the way in which Flatland and its residents are able to function: by moving about as objects on a two dimensional plane. This section is also where we learn of the aforementioned class system, which divides "people" by their geometric shape. Triangles are the lowest classes, and the lowest of the triangles have the smallest angles. After the triangles are the squares, who could be considered the upper middle class, and from there on the classes keep growing in respect based on the number of sides a "person" posses. This system continues all the way up to the high class of "circles," who have so many sides it is impossible to discern them from a circle with only the naked eye. The circles are of a class comparable to that of Victorian Royalty and/or that of High Priests.

In other sections we are introduced to the three other worlds: Pointland, Lineland, and Spaceland. Pointland is a point. It has a singular inhabitant who, to himself, is omnipresent. He is the only thing that he can perceive to exist, as he takes up all space he can understand. This of course is only a point, which has no height, width, or length.

Lineland is merely a line, it has many inhabitants, who all are also lines, and all inhabit the same line. They are unable to move around their neighbors and communicate by only their voices.

Then there is Spacland, which is made up three dimensional objects (cubes, spheres, pyramids) floating about and interacting with each other. Think of our world except instead of people there are perfect shapes.


The Part that I enjoyed the most about Flatland was its ideas of a fourth dimension. One recurring theme is that of a visitor, from a plane with more dimensions, coming to a plane with fewer dimensions to try and explain the extra dimension that the visitor can perceive but the hosts cannot. (e.g. an inhabitant of Flatland goes to Lineland, and trys to convey left and right to its inhabitants, who of course can only percieve forward and back).
Our main protagonist, a square inhabitant of Flatland, builds off this concept by trying convince us readers, along with the Spaceland inhabitant who is visiting him, of the possibility of a fourth dimension. Or a fifth. Or a sixth.

I personally found this possibility, and the way in which the book presented it, to be fascinating, and it made my head hurt as I tried to conceive the idea behind it. Though in researching for this review I learned that the fourth dimension is now widely considered to be time, and not another "direction." Though it should be noted that some theorists have created rules about what they believe would be a fourth directional dimension. Imagine a left handed glove. In three dimensions you can turn it about in which ever way you want. The theory states that if you could manipulate the fourth dimension, you would be able to "turn" the glove in a way that caused it to become a right handed glove. I thought this was cool.

In conclusion, even though it's written in painfully old English, Flatland is a short but sweet story that made me think, and presented a creative, clever, and original idea. I enjoyed it a lot, and would highly recommend it to any one.