To be a Human

What it means to “Be Human”

“Julius Deane was one hundred and thirty-five years old, his metabolism assiduously warped by a weekly fortune, in serums and hormones” (12) - how could a human live to be one hundred and thirty-five years old? An average human would live up to their eighties or nineties. Very inhuman and out of the world today.

“…you can access live or recorded simstim without having to jack out of the matrix” (53) - being humans mean having private feelings and thoughts, but in this world, people can transfer feelings and sight from one person to another.

“ ‘hang on.’ He disconnected the construct. The presence was gone. He reconnected it. ‘Dix? Who am I’” (76)? - Dixie is ROM that forgets everything once unplugged, this goes against the nature of a human for once “brain-dead,” it cannot be reversed

“Then I’d ask what your terms were” (29) - like humans, we don’t do anything without an incentive

“pure mindless reflec: he threw the beer and chicken down and ran after her” (38). - similar to the fact that any of us would react the same if a love one is killed or hurt.

The matrix goes against the law of human, for human is a living being with a brain to help us function. However, the matrix, a non-being, forces the being to connect its mind to it by “jacking in” (51)


“What he imagines, you see” (87) - a human’s thought is very private, it is a nonhuman ability to project our thoughts to someone else to see

“She slid down around him and his back arched convulsively” (33) - like any other being, the sense of reproduction, basically sex, is an urge even in this future world.

“This scam of yours, when it’s over, you erase this god dam thing” (104) - it is a rather disturbing thing to find out that you are still alive but not alive as in having a growing body and a thinking brain instead of a machine. Dixie realizes that he is dead for some time and asked to be erase or deleted since being alive this way is not worth it.

“do you think he knows he was Corto” (91)? - Every human has his or her own unique personality but Corto has been molded to assume another’s personality.

Settings in "Neuromancer" by William Gibson

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” (3). The “dead channel” is a channel of endless colors with sounds like a madness roar. As I read the first sentence of the novel, I would visualize the motions of the sky and the reflections to the raging city below it. The opening sentence not only sets the mood and setting of the novel, but it gives us foreshadowing images of what to come.

Gibson describes the setting of Ninsei as “beyond the neon shudder of ninsei, the sky was that mean shade of gray. The air had gotten worst; it seemed to have teeth tonight…” (16). The color gray is usually used for describing a situation or person to be depressed or shady, but adding the word “mean” to the description makes the image even more sharp and clear. The word “mean” shows that it is not just a shade of gray in the sky, it is a shade of gray that covers and hide the emotion under the color gray in the sky. Furthermore, the heaviness of the color created “teeth” in the atmosphere which can delivers a sharp feeling whenever people breathe because of the poor air condition. Thus sentence has the same elements as the first sentence of the novel; it gives off a rather depressing and sad feeling.

As I stated before, the first sentence also gives us foreshadowing images of what to come. Examples such as when Gibson describes the hotel, “The elevator smelled of perfume and cigarettes; the sides of the cage where scratched and thumb-smudged” (20) and “cold steel odor. Ice caressed his spine” (31). Images of darkness, coldness, sharpness, shadiness, and pain keeps popping up whenever Gibson tries to describe any certain setting in the novel. I believe this will occur quite frequently throughout the novel since the first couple of chapters reflect such dark elements.