Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott

Published 1884 · 96 pages · 33,903 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Satire & Humor, Science Fiction, Modernist & Experimental Fiction

How hard is Flatland to read?

Flatland scores 57 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 50 out of 100
Abbott's narrator uses formal Victorian diction and invented geometric terms such as Isosceles, Polygonal and Chromatistes. It is more accessible than Lolita or The Golden Bowl but denser than The Great Gatsby.
Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
The Square writes long, balanced Victorian sentences with parenthetical asides and bracketed notes, yet each argument stays clear. It is closer to The Great Gatsby's rhythm than to the hypotaxis of The Golden Bowl.
Abstraction: 68 out of 100
The book teaches dimensional analogy through points, lines and squares, with the arithmetic of terminal points carrying the argument. The social satire stays concrete, so it sits between Gatsby and Notes from Underground.
Information density: 55 out of 100
The Square packs in laws, classes, sight-recognition geometry, the Colour Revolt and the Pointland and Lineland sequences. At about 34,000 words it moves quickly, a little above The Great Gatsby in compression.
Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
The Square states his views plainly while the reader sees his blindness about women and class. The satire works by reading against him, as in the Chief Circle's treatment of the Isosceles.
Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
Dimensions work as an allegory of perception, faith and social power, with fog, colour and the Circles each carrying a meaning. The allegory is plainly signposted, so it is closer to 1984 than to Moby-Dick.
Ironic distance: 72 out of 100
The Square praises the aristocratic constitution and the destruction of the Irregular with complete sincerity, and Abbott's mockery rides on that gap. The satire is sustained, though the later chapters turn sincere.
Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
The plot closes with the Square imprisoned and unheard, but his doubts about the Cube and the unreachable fourth dimension leave the revelation open. The ending is clear, the meaning less so, like Gatsby.
Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
Two halves, the Flatland survey and the visionary narrative, are joined by the Lineland and Pointland visits. There is also a preface by an editor and bracketed notes, but the sequence is linear.

How Flatland is regarded

Flatland holds a literary regard score of 67 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where Flatland sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (71 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Flatland scores 85 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.2. About the map of stories.

Mode: Ironic
Here I brought my sentence to an inane conclusion, shaking the Square about in a purposeless manner, much to the amusement of my Grandson
Symbol: Formal
Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about
Mythos: Quixotic Satire (Irony phase 2) (irony ii)
Hence I am absolutely destitute of converts, and, for aught that I can see, the millennial Revelation has been made to me for nothing.
Genre: Anatomy + Romance
Directors of Trade, Commerce, Generalship, Architecture, Engineering, Education, Statesmanship, Legislature, Morality, Theology

Where the story of Flatland takes place

  • Flatland, a two-dimensional plane, c. its year 1999 to 2000 and the seven years after, the main setting
  • Lineland, in the Square's dream
  • Spaceland and Pointland, in the Sphere's visitation and the Square's dream

5 things that are true of Flatland, with the passage for each

  1. In Flatland, women are the lowest figures: they are only Straight Lines.

    Our Women are Straight Lines.

  2. The narrator says Flatland's annals record 120 rebellions, all of which ended in the same way.

    No less than one hundred and twenty rebellions are recorded in our annals, besides minor outbreaks numbered at two hundred and thirty-five; and they have all ended thus.

  3. The Colour Revolt's massacre leaves some 140,000 Isosceles dead by one another's angles.

    the fragments of seven score thousand of the Criminal Class slain by one another's angles attested the triumph of Order.

  4. The Chief Circle is assumed by courtesy to have ten thousand sides.

    It is always assumed, by courtesy, that the Chief Circle for the time being has ten thousand sides.

  5. The narrator writes after being imprisoned for seven years.

    Seven years have elapsed and I am still a prisoner

Scenes in Flatland that Frye would name

43 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Sparagmos, untitled
the fragments of seven score thousand of the Criminal Class slain by one another's angles attested the triumph of Order. The body of the lower order is torn to pieces in a mass slaughter.
Anagnorisis, untitled
"Either this is madness or it is Hell." "It is neither," calmly replied the voice of the Sphere The pivot of the book: the Square recognises Three Dimensions as real knowledge rather than madness.
Point of epiphany, untitled
I looked, and, behold, a new world! The moment two worlds touch: the Square sees Flatland from above, in three dimensions.
Anatomy, untitled
Our Professional Men and Gentlemen are Squares (to which class I myself belong) and Five-Sided Figures or Pentagons. A catalogue of the whole caste order, class by class.
Pathos, untitled
the Isosceles Convicts fell on and transfixed the wretched Chromatistes The leader of the Chromatic sedition is sacrificed at the Assembly.
Katabasis, untitled
Down! down! down! I was rapidly descending; and I knew that return to Flatland was my doom. The forced fall from the vision back down into the plane.

Books that share these scenes with Flatland

About the author

Edwin A. Abbott