(Group 6: Julian, Tony, Devin, Vinh, Paige. Passage: pp. 86–88, from “I had always believed that Zapparoni’s monopolies” to “His voice was pleasant, by the way” (ch. 7).) What does this passage tell us about the narrator? What do you notice about the language of this passage? How do its structure, style, and word choice affect its meaning? How would you characterize the mood or the tone of this passage? Why? How does this passage depict technological change? historical change? social change? In what sense could this passage be considered part of a work of science fiction? Does the narrator use any words, phrases, or make any references that you needed to look up in order to understand? Does the narrator use any metaphors or other figurative language in this passage? To what effect? What connections would you want to make between this passage and the rest of the novel so far?
I personally took a special interest in the line, “’Once again and year by year—‘: on this note the catalogue of the Zapparoni Works was tuned, a book which was looked forward to every October with an eagerness never enjoyed by any fairy tale or utopian novel” (Jünger 87). There’s something immediately fourth-wall breaking, almost eerie even, about the mention of utopian novels within a text in which you are deeply diving in search of sf connections. Out of all of the genres and analogies that Jünger could have chosen, he selected to highlight fairy tales and utopia. Why? This question, which I ask myself, I’m not sure I have the answer to just yet. I think it has something to do with fairy tale and utopia essentially being opposite sides of the same coin – both strive for the idea of perfection, but what is fantastical and one is rooted in science – and this is much the impression we get of the Victor Frankenstein and Santa Claus hybrid that is Zapparoni. I find this line to be a very succinct and accurate summary of the sense of Zapparoni we are given in this first half of the novel. He strikes me as a kind of marriage between the old world and the future; he is reminiscent of the past which is yearned for and revisited frequently by Richard in character, appearance, and especially in the description of his almost Victorian English estate, and yet he is the architect of the future of this world. Zapparoni, and the world he lives in, is the embodiment of juxtaposition. He lives in an almost Journey to the Center of the Earth-esque pastoral paradise located beneath a gray, uniform, mechanical factory of autonomous production. Zapparoni is simultaneous warm and welcoming to Richard, while also very cold and calculated in his assessment of him, underneath the Santa Claus façade. This passage is the embodiment of all of that – the children of the world, representative of the future, the next generation, eagerly wait with child-like wonder to be consumed by the cold, robotic, capitalist overlord. The title of the novel, deriving its name from the autonomous creations living in Zapparoni’s garden, which we meet towards the end of our assigned reading section, again draw a parallel with their creator; Zapparoni himself is a glass bee, something beautiful and pure and working for the greater good in theory, but transparent, industrious, and invoking a feeling of the uncanny in practice.
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For our class discussion of Glass Bees by Ernst Jünger, my classmate Tony Lukin and I were assigned the same passage to close read. Collaboration, like in the genre’s most famous plots, has been indispensable to the acquisition of knowledge in this class, and so I felt it vital to include Tony’s post alongside mine — both for the sake of comparing and contrasting our ideas, and as a representation of the great discussion we had about our ideas in the class following the writing of these blog posts. I especially admire the way Tony emphasizes how in the novel, we only ever see things through the perspective of Richard, and what the implications of this may be to our comprehension of the text.
“This passage from “The Glass Bees” conveys Richard’s emotions felt toward Zapparoni when he is introduced to the inventor for the first time. Giacomo Zapparoni is one of the most prominent and wealthy figures of the time who runs a large firm that builds advanced robots. The character of Zapparoni is labeled as very cryptic and elusive throughout the book, so for Richard to be able to meet Zapparoni in-person shows him the differences between the public and the private persona of the entrepreneur. The passage clearly expresses that Richard was in a state of shock and awe when he initially saw Zapparoni. The public image of Zapparoni that was created through films described him as “a benign grandfather or a Santa Claus”, but Richard stated that “the great Zapparoni…did not in the least resemble the person who I was facing” (86). This creates an interesting question of who Zapparoni might actually be if the public descriptions of his appearance do not match his actual appearance. The language that is used in this passage carries a very respectful and somewhat curious tone as Richard continues to further express the vast admiration that he holds for Zapparoni, despite the differences in perceived appearance, since he simply described him as “great”, “skillful”, or someone that has a “mercurial intelligence”. Even though Richard was surprised by Zapparoni’s actual appearance compared to his perceived image of him, Richard did not lose any of the respect or admiration that he had towards Zapparoni.
Richard, as a way to possibly figure out how Zapparoni could have different appearances, begins to believe in the possibility that Zapparoni has hired actors or “shadows” or “projections” that would represent him in public while Zapparoni controlled and watched their actions. He even brings about the idea that Zapparoni invented robots in his own likeness and that Zapparoni could “enter apparatuses” and leave parts of himself “within them”, as to make the robots more in his image. For Richard who had grown up in a time where technology had not been this advanced, this seems like a plausible explanation to him and it shows how much society had technologically changed if something like being able to put your likeness in a machine is feasible. This also ties the story in with traditional science fiction topics of advanced technologies and androids (somewhat).
One thing that I find very interesting in the book that presents itself very heavily in this passage is the first-person narration of the story by Richard. The author does not simply describe Zapparoni’s appearance to us, but we are told about his appearance through Richard’s perspective. Everything that happens in this book is reflected and colored by the opinions, perspective, and worldview of Richard. Technically, we never really see and are never really described who the real Zapparoni is. We simply see the Zapparoni that is placed on a pedestal and filtered from the viewpoint of Richard.”