Night-Sea Journey (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Barth
- First Published: 1966
- Type of Plot: Allegory
- Time of Work: Anytime
- Setting: Anywhere
- Principal Characters: The swimmer
- Genres: Short fiction, Allegory, Philosophical realism
- Subjects: Human race, Truth, Symbolism
The Story
Story and theme are one and the same in this interior monologue by a spermatozoan swimming toward an ovum. He announces immediately that “it's myself I address” and that he has two aims: to “rehearse” the human condition and to disclose his “secret hope.” As he considers his existence (and humankind's), he evaluates the various ontologies, or theories of being, that philosophers have conjured up; he meditates as well on some common, and uncommon, theodicies, or explanations of why the world is the way it is. He raises first the insoluble metaphysical...
[The entire page is 1482 words long]
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