Billenium

Billenium

• 1.
  Billenium Agustin Fila andMatias Castro Cendra
• 2.
  James Graham Ballard 15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009  Was an english novelist, short story writer and essayist.  The genre of his stories were science fiction and transgressive fiction.
• 3.
  Characters  John Ward:they call him Ward, he is middle age, he worked as a librarian, he becomes what he hates at the biggining of the story for money, protagonist of the story, he find the secret room  Henry Rossiter: He was Ward best friend, he was self interest, ambicious for money.
• 4.
  Relevance of thetitle  The story describes a situation in the future when the population of the world has grown so much that there is not space for people to have a normal life. The sapce that each person can have is regulated by the city council. “Billenium” makes reference to a time in the future were over population will be the biggest problem for human race.
• 5.
  Tone  Pessimister: Wecan see when we read the story that the characters don´t have any type of hope for the future, because they know that the situation is not going to change. The characters have a pacific role in all the story “The street was always full, and endless clamour of voices and shuffling feet.”
• 6.
  Theme  Overpopulation –lack of responsibility: The world was overpopulated, and they all live in small cubicles. The land lords sent them into this cubicles and they don´t have the resposibility of having their own house and the resposibility that it takes. “The street was always full, an endless clamour of voices and shuffilng feet.”
• 7.
  Theme  Power andloss of privacy: Rossiter and Ward become powerful when they discover the secret room, and they started to live there but when they met the girls, they said to them to live with them but they have to pay some money to stay in the room, but then the girls started bringing her familiars so they have to make smallest the place so they started to lose privacy. “Six beds now in line along the wall. This gave each of them closer together.”
• 8.
  Theme  Destruction ofbeauty: The world is overpopulated so the people had to live in smallest rooms, like cubicles, so there is no space for furniture or any other decoration. Also all the cathedrals, churches and townhall lost their beauty because people started living inside them. “The great banqueting room in the former city hall had been split horizontally into four decks, each of these cut up into hundreds of cubicles.”
• 9.
  Symbolism  The wardrobewas of the 1990´s. The significance of the wardrobe is the loss of beauty and the lack of space. They can only have the wardrobe when they move to the secret big room because there was space to put it. This makes us realized how beauty was lost because in the cubicles there was no space to put furniture or decorations . “It was a beauty wardrobe, without doubt, but when it was gone it would make the room seem even larger”
• 10.
  Symbolism  The cubicle:The word cubicle symbolises the room, because they live in a little space so the room where they had to live is like a cubicle. It also symbolise lack of privacy, lack of space, lack of power because they can´t decide where to live. “´The wall does tilt a little´, Ward admitted. ´Actually, its about four degrees out- I used a plumb-line. But there´s still plenty of room on the stairs for people to get by.”