If i’m being completely honest this work was really hard to understand and gather meaning from. One overall theme that I noticed however was the theme of rotation. Shed XII maintains a fascination with bicycles throughout the text. This fascination completes its course when it turns into a plan bicycle in the end of the story. However, loops, circles, motorcycles, wheels and barrels all make an appearance in the text. Usually these circular objects where aided by a sense of motion and travel as the bicycle itself was a symbol of escape. However the idea of circles and rotation were used as both a way to display off-landish fantasies, but also as a form of imprisonment, as in the case of the barrels. I could possibly understand the duality of the motif of rotation as a symbol of cycles. In that case rotation would bring about a new horizon and a new alien experience, but in the end one is stuck in the same loop: leading to a trapped feeling. I might be reading too much into the idea, but the sheer amount of circular/rotational type things in this text can’t be for nothing. I was also confused when the shed starts dreaming of becoming a battleship as his escapist day-dreams almost always took the form of a bicycle. A battleship doesn’t have a concrete shape and generally symbolizes war and industrialization. Overall I was very confused by this text, especially about the ending, but context will surely help.
6 thoughts on “Rotations”
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Colby, I think you bring up an interesting point about the recurrence of rotations and cycles. I too noticed this and was perplexed at first. The idea of being stuck in a loop is an interesting theme, but I am still unsure what to make of it. One thing I likened this sort of revolution to (in the circular, non-societal upheaval sense), was Zamyatin’s piece “On Literature, Revolution, and Entropy”. His calls for constant revolution and his rejection of societal calcification, though, seem to have weirdly contrary and percussive relations to the cyclic motifs in Shed XII.
It seems that the image of the circle has many different meanings in this text as it progresses. Meanings related to time, revolution, memory, centering within a sense of self, solipsism (note that the story has strong philosophical underpinnings), imprisonment, stifling repetition, and many others. After all, even the barrels are contained within circular bands… The passage about circles on the lower part of p. 52 is a good example of how these meanings flow one into another (here, the hoop represents both “concentric rings of memory” and a “closed circle,” for instance). So I don’t think that there is a single answer here… the point is the multi-valence of the image. And both of you, Colby and Jacob, are quite right to sense its importance!
I agree! As both of you have mentioned, there is a cycle that keeps continuing, one of new generations filtering new and old ideas. For Shed XII, his rotation ends when he takes his life by starting the fire. For Shed XII, his circle has ended. As was mentioned in class, Shed XII embodied soviet idealism, and with his death came the end of the Soviet Union. This was hinted at with the color red, the tension between ideologies, the disgust for fermenting cucumbers, and the bicycles.
Very astute observation regarding the cyclical motifs. As for the battleship’s role in the story, I think you are right to tie it to “war” and “industrialization.” I wonder if these two things are a bi product of cyclical or revolutionary patterns in society. If the bicycles represent revolution (literally and politically), then the Battleships could represent fallout. I’m thinking of the film “Battleship Potemkin,” which turns a battleship, a symbol of industry and war, into a venue for revolution.
The first thing I thought of was “Battleship Potemkin” as well. However I resolved that it couldn’t be that as in that movie the battleship was a symbol of the revolution and a weapon (in a sense) in fighting that fight against a cruel oppressor. However in this text the battleship imagery comes at a time when the shed is the most stagnant and brainwashed he could possibly be. It can’t be a symbol of war or revolution as it would make no sense that a conformed character would have these dreams. Hence industrialization is the only thing that makes sense, but I don’t really see how that plays into the overall themes of the text.
Colby and Ethan, I am confused about where you are seeing a battleship in the text? Perhaps I am missing it, but the only place I recall any sort of ship being mentioned is on p. 55, when the shed imagines himself as a “ship sailing out into tomorrow,” and the barrel being like the ballast that guarantees stability. This image is very much in keeping with the idea of the pickle barrel as a force of stability (and AGAINST revolution), and it also works well as a representation of the ship of state (stabilized by the uniform masses of fermenting pickles)!
So, unless you can point me to a different passage, I don’t see any relationship here either to industrialization or to the Battleship Potemkin, war, revolution, or any of these other themes. The ship here is clearly presented as an image of massive stability that cannot be shaken or overturned.
(Also, I searched the Russian original of this text, and the word for battleship — bronenosets (броненосец) — is not there.