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The world of flatland created is a Victorian society. In the two dimensional world, the different people, whom are polygons with different number of sides, were born into their classes. The social classes are based on how many sides they born with.

They are powerless to change the class statuses for the rest of their life. The higher power controls everything, and the sons of higher power, many-sides polygons, are the only ones that can evolve as many as fifty or more sides each generation. The sons of the lower class, triangles (represent workers), are at the bottom of the hierarchy. And they are only capable of evolving one and a half of a degree more each generation. Since circles are perceived as the perfect shape in the two-dimensional world. The goal is to get as many sides as possible, to get as close to a circle as possible. Thus the society is built to oppress the lower class, and serve the best interests of the higher class, by making it impossible for lower class to move up the social ladder forever. Women are of a separated category. They are only lines from the one dimensional world, therefore, they are incapable of any activity of the two dimensional world, therefore, they have no right in the two dimensional world, a world of men. They are also perceived as harmful.

The society of the two dimensional world also takes comfort in being the highest dimension, looking down on the lower dimension. They are unable to see the higher dimensions. If they are sighs said other wise, they oppress it to ensure the security and comfort of being the highest. This is also true for the lower dimensions and the higher dimensions as well. The sphere in the three dimensional world are incapable of accepting the fact that there may be a fourth dimensions.

Flatland used the mathematical idea of different dimensions to describe a world of narrowed view of human, and the social problem of classes. The author has brought the readers into a different dimension, a dimension of the math/science approach to view the social problem of the world. It’s fresh and captivating, and the message seems even clearer then the normal approach. This is an example of it’s really hard to see the truth when you are directly in it. All the ideas about truth that we have are only ideas that build upon our own understanding, understanding that build on own perception of world, not the understanding of truth itself. It just a lot easier to see what the mountain really looks like when you are not on it.