Iterations Final Reflection Essay
Forever repeating, neverending, without a true destination. The concept of infinity has come up in my own personal experience in my class with Beth McCoy, African American Literature, as well as in some of our course topics such as African Fractals by Ron Eglash, and The Water Cure by Percival Everett. African Fractals is a topic we focused on throughout the course, our cornerstone, applying it to each concept. Fractals can be described as patterns that repeat itself, onto itself. This pattern is never-ending, and decreases in scale infinitely. According to Eglash, “African visualizations for infinity are snail shells”(Eglash, 148). This represents their symbol for infinity because of “the scaling properties of their logarithmic spirals; one can clearly see the potential for the spiral to continue without end despite it’s containment in finite space- indeed, it is only because of its containment in a finite space that there is a sense of having gained access to or grasped at the infinite”(Eglash, 148). It is easier to understand the concept of infinity when you can visualize it. This is why discovering infinity in The Water Cure is less concrete. The novel is a satiric comedy/horror novel about the experiences and thought processes of an Ishmael Kidder, who may or may not have a man in his basement who may or may not be the culprit of his daughter’s rape and death. The concept of infinity is used in a more metaphorical way, to describe his desires, and the idea of wanting to achieve something that he can’t quite reach, making that motion towards his desires one of infinite movement. I have had a similar experience when reflecting on my own writing this semester. Approaching the concept of infinity from African Fractals is something that involves discussing my personal experience, and connecting this to events in other course topics such as The Water Cure by Percival Everett.
When discussing my experience in this course, this idea of infinity comes up relatively frequently, especially when it comes to finding a destination and purpose when writing. For example, when I first started this class, I already had experience with my professor, Dr. Beth McCoy. In my previous class with her, she gave me feedback on one of my essays, advising me to slow down. It was at this point in my education career that when getting this guidance, I interpreted it as a way to solely improve my writing and product. I thought of it as a tool to allow me to get my essays done in a more efficient manner, that will help me to achieve a better grade or attain more positive reinforcement from professors. However, through this class I have realized that this feedback from Beth has so much more significance and purpose behind it.
The importance of slowing down lies in the benefits and growth that you receive from taking time to unpack your thoughts and ideas. Unpacking results in more clarity within myself, as well as increased understanding in the reader, as they can more fully understand my thought processes. My motive should be less about the grade I receive, and more about the purpose of the essay I write. This is emphasized further in group collaborations during this semester, in talking with each other and discussing sensitive topics. Without slowing down, or finding your essay’s destination, your essay goes on infinitely, without true motion, without purpose. For this reason, I have learned to slow down, giving my essay a place to land, giving my thoughts the chance to fully form. With this in mind, I have found the concept of infinity not just in my own experiences, but in specific ideas throughout this course, such as The Water Cure and African Fractals.
When Ishmael Kidder in The Water Cure talks about the supposed man in his basement, the concept of infinity is brought up several times. For example, he uses infinity to describe torture he experiences, torture he inflicts onto the supposed man in his basement, as well as his love for his daughter. When inflicting infinite torture, Kidder places mirrors all around his culprit, and discusses the idea that there is infinite space between the man in the basement and the mirrors surrounding him, forever reflecting his own image. He describes that he “wanted him to have the company of infinite incidence and refraction, unending repetition, the forever drip drip drip of his own image”(Everett, 129). This idea leads me back to African Fractals, as Kidder uses mirrors to visualize infinity, compared to the African symbol of snail shells. Kidder also frequently refers to the theories and work of Zeno, a philosopher who talks about the concept of Dichotomy. The Dichotomy Paradox, as provided to us by Beth, is the idea that to get somewhere, you have to travel half of that distance, and then half of that half, and so on, continuing to infinity. Each step taken, task completed, built off of the one before. This idea is also similar to that of African Fractals, as their patterns are always building off of each other.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in describing the paradox, describes the problem that traveling infinitely “must take an infinite time, which is to say it is never completed. And since the argument does not depend on the distance or who or what the mover is, it follows that no finite distance can ever be traveled, which is to say that all motion is impossible”(Huggett, 2024). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/ Kidder applies this Dichotomy Paradox to his approach to torturing the man in his basement, as well as his love for his deceased daughter. When applying this paradox to the man in his basement, he attributes the idea, again, to the mirrors that he has placed around him, and describes that he only experiences the betweens of the mirrors. There is infinite space between him and the mirrors, that he can only infinitely interact with his reflections. He describes this to him, saying “there you are again and again and again and in order for you to appear you have to dissociate yourself from everything around you, but you can’t do that, can you”(Everett, 59)? Kidder is using the infinite images that the man in his basement is seeing of himself to torture him, as well as to hide himself. Furthermore, Kidder uses the Dichotomy Paradox to emphasize his love for his daughter, as well as his guilt and yearning to no longer exist.
Just like the concept of movement when traveling half of a distance infinitely, Kidder wishes he could punish himself for surviving rather than his daughter, but he describes his problem, saying “you never cut a thing down to nothing. There is never a final cut. Daily, I slice away at my love for my daughter, at my guilt for surviving, at my resolve for revenge and slice away at merely myself, and it remains painfully obvious that I’m all still here, always big enough to be cut a million more times”(Everett, 164). Kidder wants to be with his daughter, but the anger of not being able to do so drives him to commit violence toward himself, the man in his basement, and even the love he has for his daughter. Earlier in the novel, however, Kidder describes his love for his daughter as “this desire for infinite words”(Everett, 18). He elaborates on this statement by saying “you cannot have the desire unless you love infinitely.(Everett, 18)” Again leading back to African Fractals, Kidder again uses another symbol to represent infinity compared to snail shells; words. Kidder loves his daughter infinitely, and wishes to speak to her infinitely. He further describes this love by imagining her daughter at a word shop, possibly with the desire for infinite words but having to purchase them. With only a dollar, she buys a box with four words, and after opening the box and finding it empty, “she marched back into the wordshop and said, ‘THIS BOX IS EMPTY!”(Everett, 121) using her four words. After doing this a second time, she is left with empty boxes, without words. This emphasizes the idea that Kidder wants the infinite ability to speak to his daughter, but any words he speaks to her have no true destination, and travel both endlessly, and with static movement. He imagines that his daughter is having the same struggle. This love that Kidder has for his daughter turns into one of infinite desire, torture, and movement towards an illusory destination.
The concept of infinity based on African Fractals is one that can be applied to my experiences in this course, African American Literature, and our last topic, The Water Cure. Finding a destination with this essay involved circling back to past experiences, noticing changes in my writing, and applying that to my life as well as The Water Cure, connecting these two concepts through African Fractals. Throughout writing this essay, I have learned that my writing has purpose beyond a grade, and that this class shouldn’t end here, but concepts learned in this environment should stretch to finding connections throughout our lives and in others as well.