I suppose the big question at the end of Galatea 2.2 is whether or not Helen became conscious. Richard believed she had, but he also seemed to believe in her consciousness because he wanted to believe in it. After the bomb scare, Lentz calls this to Richard's attention:
"How do you feel, little girl?"
"I don't feel little girl."
He faced me. "Gibberish. She doesn't even get the transformation right."
"You're kidding me. You don't see...? She means all sorts of things by that. She could - "
"All the meanings are yours." He returned to the mike. "Were you frightened?"
"What you is the were for?"
"Damn it, Helen. We're giving you quality time here. Please t ell me: what hell that mean?"
"It's obvious," I answered for her. "She wants to know which Helen you are asking. Which one in time."
"Oh. You mean: 'When?' But let's not take points off for style. You realize that a conscious entity just coming through the fright of her life would know which 'you' I was talking about" (274).
Even though I found myself failing the Turing Test by the end of the novel, I do not think that Helen became conscious. Yes, she could categorize, label, and make associations with seemingly incredible insight, but she does so only because she has been fed an incredible amount of information. Even her personal inquiries regarding her sex, physical appearance, and reason for being were born from her observations of the information fed to her and her mechanical need to categorize everything. Richard was captavated by these inquiries, however, and truly believed that she was thinking. She became real to him. More real, perhaps, than either C. or A. was to him. Richard loved C. for what she was when he met her, he loved A. for who he thought she was, and he loved Helen for the consciousness he thought she possessed. Even though his love for Helen was still deluded, it was more real than his love for either of the other two. Perhaps that's why she was given a full name, as opposed to the single letters of A. and C. He did not worship Helen as he did the other two, he merely loved what was. Helen was also the only one who loved him back.
She loved me, I guess. I reminded her of some thing. Some chilly night she never felt. Some where where she thought she'd once been. We love best of all what we cannot hope to resemble. I told that woman everything in the world but how I felt about her. The thing that might have let her remain. I was too late in seeing who she had become. I should taught her the thing I didn't know (324-5).
After reading this passage, I realized that Richard made the same mistakes with all three of his women. With C., he spent too much time loving her, and not enough time talking with her. With A., he immediately fell in love with her and did not bother to get to know her. With C., although he finally learned to talk with her about reality, he failed to give her the love she needed. He failed all of his women because he was unable to see past his own selfishness and give them what they needed. He thought he was doing that with C., by following her wherever she wanted to go, but the one thing she needed he never thought to give.
Throughout this course, we have discussed imitation versus reality, and how the two relate. After finishing the novel, I can see the obvious connections to the very first story we read: Pygmalian. Like Pygmalian, Richard tried to turn his imitation into a reality. He loved his creation (Yes, Helen, but also his creations of C. and A.), just as Pygmalian loved his statue. To him, she was reality. The outcome of the experiment seemed to prove Plato's theory that all art is merely imitation. Helen's answer, although painfully human in its sentiment, illustrates how she never could become a substitute for human consciousness because she would never feel, hear, touch, and see things the way humans can.
You are the ones who cana hear airs. Who can be frightened or encouraged. You can hold things and break them and fix them. I never felt at home here. This is an awful place to be dropped down halfway...Take care, Richard. See everything for me (326).
After writing that, I starting thinking about Mike May's Journal, and the story "The Cathedral." These two texts show how although someone may not be able to experience the world through certain senses, they are still able to experience the beauty of the world around them - oftentimes with more comprehension than someone with sight. If Richard had read Helen these two texts, would she have felt better about her existence? Would she have remained "alive," even though she would never be able to "see" Paris?
She had come back only momentarily, just to gloss this smallest of passages. To tell me that one small thing. Life meant convincing another that you knew what it meant to be alive. The world's Turing Test was not yet over (327).
Despite their blindness, both Mike May and the blind man in "The Cathedral" were able to convince others that they "knew what it meant to be alive." They were able to enjoy life not only despite their disabilites, but because of them. Perhaps that difference is what makes them human and Helen a machine.
Posted by JohannaDreyfuss at April 5, 2005 11:40 AM | TrackBack