I found this on the freebie table and couldn't resist picking it up to reread for the lebentieth time. I've been reading it at the office during the afternoon hours when I am essentially just hanging out.
I did have a couple of new thoughts about the book - new to me anyway. There is a scene where Lige is trying to explain to Daneel about his wife's name. Her name is Jezebel, but she goes by Jessie - and there is a lot of psychobabble about her self image and the taste of wickedness which she relishes - and Lige destroys. He explains that Jezebel is a person in the Bible, and Daneel asks him "What is the Bible?" Lige goes on to explain that it is a book sacred to a large portion of Earth's population, and Daneel says, "I do not understand the adjective in this context." Lige then realizes that that segment of humanity which moved to the stars has abandoned religion and that Daneel as a product of Spacer society is not aware of these ideas which are so fundamental to Earth society. Seems to me that so much of the language and literature of the human species is laced with references to the Bible that it is unlikely to have disappeared from the fundamental knowledge base within the few hundred years that Asimov threw this story into the future even by those who have left Mother Earth for other worlds.
I could be wrong, I suppose, I have found that many/most young people have very little actual knowledge of the Bible even today. However, those who are the most ignorant are frequently the most strident about the importance of religion - as it has been defined to them by their families. Still, if Shakespeare and the Bible disappeared from Western Literature - there wouldn't be much left. Those two provide a very large portion of the societal analogies which allow us to understand (and misunderstand) each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment