Monday, April 04, 2005
The Cure by Sonia Levitin
The Cure is set in a future where diversity is a bad word and where music and arts are forms of deviance. People are produced in twins who are then mated for life. Serotonins, subliminals, and conditioning assure that people will be calm and ordinary.
Gemm 16884 dreams of music, he walks to a different cadence from his friends, and now that his time of adult choice is approaching his yearning to dance and make music are becoming more prominant. When the Elders become aware of Gemm's deviance, they offer him a choice of death through recycling or The Cure. Desperate for life, Gemm chooses The Cure and finds himself living in 1348 Strausburg Germany as a young Jewish man. The Black Plague is just starting to spread throughout Europe and pogroms against Jews are flaring up. Gemm, as Johannes, is a music loving young man looking forward to marriage and working as assistant to his moneylender father. Through the hard times and oppression Johannes' music is a bright and happy light.
I won't tell how it is that the experience is supposed to turn Gemm against music forever but it is violent. Can anyone go through that and not be changed?
Gemm 16884 dreams of music, he walks to a different cadence from his friends, and now that his time of adult choice is approaching his yearning to dance and make music are becoming more prominant. When the Elders become aware of Gemm's deviance, they offer him a choice of death through recycling or The Cure. Desperate for life, Gemm chooses The Cure and finds himself living in 1348 Strausburg Germany as a young Jewish man. The Black Plague is just starting to spread throughout Europe and pogroms against Jews are flaring up. Gemm, as Johannes, is a music loving young man looking forward to marriage and working as assistant to his moneylender father. Through the hard times and oppression Johannes' music is a bright and happy light.
I won't tell how it is that the experience is supposed to turn Gemm against music forever but it is violent. Can anyone go through that and not be changed?
# posted by JJ @ 6:32 PM 
