Flatland · Chapter
Concerning Our Priests explained
The narrator, a Square, prepares to describe his initiation into the mysteries of Space, but first offers final remarks on the Circles or Priests of Flatland, who are the administrators of all aspects of society.
What happens
The narrator, a Square, prepares to describe his initiation into the mysteries of Space, but first offers final remarks on the Circles or Priests of Flatland, who are the administrators of all aspects of society. He explains that Circles are actually Polygons with many small sides, and describes the social and biological mechanisms—including a risky surgical procedure—by which Polygons on the fringe of the Circular class may attempt to elevate their offspring to Circular status.
Themes in this chapter
Social Hierarchy and Class
The chapter details the rigid class structure of Flatland, where Circles (actually Polygons) hold supreme power and Polygons strive to elevate their status through risky surgical procedures.
Power and Control
The Circles control all aspects of Flatland life—administration, art, science, and morality—and maintain their dominance through mystery and social customs.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator (A Square)
The narrator reflects on the nature of Flatland's Priests and the social dynamics of Circular propagation, setting the stage for his central story.
- The Circles
The Circles are described as the controllers of Flatland's society, actually Polygons with many sides, and their propagation involves both natural laws and artificial interventions.
Key passages
“It is high time that I should pass from these brief and discursive notes about things in Flatland to the central event of this book, my initiation into the mysteries of Space.”
The narrator announces that he will now move from general descriptions to the main subject: his own introduction to the concept of Space.
The Square signals a shift from background exposition to the core narrative of his encounter with the Sphere.
“When I call them Priests, let me not be understood as meaning no more than the term denotes with you. With us, our Priests are administrators of all business, art, and science; directors of trade, commerce, generalship, architecture, engineering, education, statesmanship, legislature, morality, theology; doing nothing themselves, they are the causes of everything worth doing, that is done by others.”
The narrator clarifies that Flatland's Priests are not merely religious figures but the ultimate authorities over every field of human endeavor, orchestrating all important actions without directly performing them.
This passage emphasizes the all-encompassing power and control of the Circles over Flatland society.
“Our physicians have discovered that the small and tender sides of an infant Polygon of the higher class can be fractured, and his whole frame reset, with such exactness that a Polygon of two or three hundred sides sometimes—by no means always, for the process is attended with serious risk—but sometimes overleaps two or three hundred generations, and as it were doubles at a stroke, the number of his progenitors and the nobility of his descent.”
Doctors can break and reset the sides of a high-class infant Polygon to artificially increase its side count, potentially advancing its social rank by hundreds of generations, though the procedure is often fatal.
This describes the extreme measures taken by Polygons to achieve Circular status, highlighting the societal obsession with class mobility.