Week 5

Cosmopolis is a really interesting piece. The novel is talking about a young successful man, Eric. He lives in New York, smart and brilliant. He understands how the system of economic works and therefore earn a lot of money. However, just in one day. He misses calculating the price of “Yen,” on the way to the barbershop his life corrupt.

I like how the story uses “rat” to represent the corrupt of the economic system. When everything we know is gone. There won’t be such things known as “value.” There is a line in the story: “A rat became the units of currency.” It shows the odd but horrifies topic of the novel.

For most of the part, Erik is not a likable character. Even he fails and broke, he had always got his chance to work it back. (His wife is rich and he still got his skill of economic.) However, he chose to let himself perish. Or In another way, he gives up himself. Have sex with random girls, to weakness the riot and tracing the assassin. The story seems crazy, what Erik did is unreplaceable, hard to understand. There are so many questions while I am reading the plot. I think the character Erik is a representative of the modern society. We tried to predict all the things, but when a mistake happens everything will drag in it. Just like Erik can’t save himself in the story. Most people are also tracing the craziness of money, until one day we realize everything is just like a rat.

Talking to the topic privilege, the story also shows the interesting and odd society class. Erik is the highest class on the society, an elite of the world. In many ways, Erik does have the privilege. However, everything he got can be destroyed in one day. It is just that weak and funny.