Key Words, MAR Reading Group 2020-2021

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Reading Day 3

Allegory - Drawing the lineECF #essay, #line, #cyrcle, #rhizome

‘As an act, drawing a line is inexact and violent’. (Johnson 106). Let’s take Johnny Cash’ famous song I walk the line, written in 1975. A straight line is the shortest path between two points (A and B). Walking implies a displacement from A to B. When Johnny walks the line, he’s performing an oriented operation. This makes ‘the line’ a vector.

Now, let’s take June Carter and Merle Kilgore’s Ring of fire, written a few years later. A ring most commonly refers to a hollow circular shape. When drawing a circle, any starting point (A) and ending point (B) are necessarily identical. You cannot walk a circle without arriving at exactly the same point you departed from. June ‘falls into a ring of fire’, so she is trapped inside a closed curve from which not only she cannot get out, but also where the border gets further and further from her reach as she falls.

An allegory is a literary resource in which the characters and/or plot of a story, poem, play or picture represent particular qualities or ideas that relate to morals, religion, or politics. In an allegory (at least) two

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