Irregular Shapes In Flatland

Flatland is a two dimensional world, whose citizens consist of shapes like triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, and circles. This world is divided into a class system where the more sides or angles you have, the higher in class a person is. In Flatland, all figures must be regular and by regular they mean equal sided. Every shape is in its more honorable state if it has equal length in all sides. But there is the the rare situation when an irregular shape is born. Irregular shapes are viewed as extremely low in the class system, most are destroyed because of the controversy they cause in society. Flatland depends on sight and touch to identify each others shapes, but this process is made more difficult if a person was irregular. This causes confusion and unsureness about people's shapes and possibly a war or rebellion. In order to avoid these catastrophic events most are destroyed at birth. But there is a surgery an irregular newborn can go through to make him regular; It is risky, but without it they could go the rest of their lives being publicly shunned. …show more content…
By law of nature every male child is supposed to have a shape that is increased by one more side than his father's. For example, if the father was a pentagon then his son will be a hexagon, every generation increases. But this does not happen for the irregulars, the son of an unequally-sided triangle will remain unequal and therefore does not follow the status quo, rather, populate society with more irregulars. Nevertheless, there is still hope for the irregulars. Priests can arrange marriages between the more skillful irregulars who can possibly birth a son with equal sides. The only down side is that this son will be taken from them and placed in a home with regular-shaped