Mind over Matter

Dualism of Mind and Body notes:

"distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face" (52). shows he is praising escape from the flesh, contempt for flesh

"he began to feel the passivity of the situation irritating." (55), showing he even hates simstim, he wants to be in the matrix with his own thoughts (mind).

“her body language was disorienting, her style foreign… she slid a hand into her jacket, a fingertip circling a nipple under warm silk. The sensation made him catch his breath,” (56). Even though Case is in Simstim, he feels bodily pleasures.

“the recoil almost broke his wrist. The muzzle-flash lit the office like a flashbulb. With his ears ringing, he started at the jagged hole in the front of the desk.” (119) this is when Case flatlines but his mind still functions with the use of his senses.

“He’d cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bed slab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn’t there” (5), suggesting Case wants to be in cyberspace, he wants to escape flesh. could also be why he uses drugs?

"He’d go straight to the deck, not bothering to dress, and jack in. He was cutting it. He was working. He lost track of days,” (59). Case denies his body for cyberspace

‘I saw th’ screen, EEG readin’ dead. Nothin’ movin’, forty second,’ (121). Case was dead, but still experiencing hallucination.

"deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button." Shows how humans are evolutionarily significant, and maybe how the body is designed as near-perfect for humans.

Night City was not there for its "inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself." (11) Shows power of the mind, and the realm of possibility there.

Overall, I think Gibson argues over the mind being more important than the flesh, but places emphasis on the mind requiring the body in order to function at optimum levels. Gibson uses the five sense throughout Neuromancer to convey a point about the power of the mind -- sometimes he even uses two senses (suggesting a bit of synesthesia, a mental phenomenon in which the stimulation of one sense automatically stimulates another sense) to show the brilliance of the mind.