Eliana: This book is very diverse in it’s content, like the intentional misgendering of charcters.
Maddie: Yeah, this book and the rest of what we’ve discussed has talked a lot about the intersectionality of disability and it’s relation to sex, gender, and race.
Daniel: The author very intentionally includes discussions on class and other intersectionality, not necessary a full on allegory, but definitely an intentional discussion
Emily (we couldn’t quite understand due to wifi, but was attempting to contribute to the discussion of authors intention.)
Dr. Foss asks us about Aster and leaves
Maddie: Aster is an active demonstration of the societal expectations that her disability prevents her from fulfilling. Theo originally calls her his intellectual superior, in a way of support?, but doesn’t realize the full capability that Aster has
Sonia: People in the book expect Aster and Theo to be romantically involved, but they feel more than friendships, but not whole-heartedly romantic. Theo expects here to define those goals and she just cant.
Maddie: Did you guys think anything about the POV changes, did it work as well in Good Kings Bad Kings?
Sonia: I think it was more distracting, especially since it was in third-person limited 90% of the time. The switching provided different perspectives but the lack of consistency took away from the story.
Eliana: I can see the pros and cons of different povs, but this novel had a lot of characters that all had agency, and the limited pov took away from the agency that they could have had. In terms of disability, the pov can help show how disability plays into the novel
Maddie: The limited third person perspective provides the readers with a thought of what Aster herself is limited to.
Foss: What about the setting?
Daniel: The setting allows us to have some type of reflection on our society. The fact that the futuristic setting, leaving Earth, could demonstrate that we had to leave because we destroyed the Earth. The demonstration of race with Theo shows that not much changed from the past to the future.
Maddie: The movement of humanity to space, but the repetition of the same events could be a representation of that cliche of “repeating the same things over and over again is insanity” which could relate to Dickinson’s piece on Madness. he societal acceptance of their mass madness, but the rejection of what they view as “mad” because it’s different, despite being supposedly “Advanced”
