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The Dot And the Line: The Romance in Lower Mathematics

In The Dot and the Line: The Romance in Lower Mathematics, Norton Juster narrates a fictitious yet enthusing story of love between two geometric symbols, the line and the dot. At first, the line courts the dot, but she only had eyes for squiggle, who seems to be wild and unkempt. She and the squiggle are everywhere together, singing, dancing, and having much fun. She often compares both of them, and the squiggle always arrives triumphant. The line begs for chances, but it gives no effect ‘til his worried friends try to cheer him up. They tell him to love someone else; but in his eyes, she’s perfect, and that, she really is the one. And so, he spends his time dreaming of her and imagining himself as someone she is sure to admire. He is really that determined to fight for love. 

 Soon, he grows tired of self-deception, and inquires the squiggly line of the answers he’s looking for. Result? He always ends up the same way. He continues trying and fails and tries again, discovering later that due to great concentration and self-control, he’s able to change direction and bend wherever he chooses. Sacrificing his time to practice, he fully makes different shapes from simple to complex ones. Bringing with him old love and new confidence, he seeks the dot once again. She is impressed, while the squiggle did his best. In the end, she realizes that she is wrong in deciding who’s right for her. They live for a reason – to love each other and build a clan of their own.

The Dot and the Line by Norton Juster

The narrator personifies the symbols on how people fight, decide, struggle, fail, and win for love’s sake; that is, a saga in lower mathematics. There is character-building. As for the line, he starts from a pitied loser and ends up a deserving victor. Also, as the story gets nearer to an end, the dot gradually adjusts to her prospect of love, as something she would want to feel forever. The tempo of events changes when she finds out how blind she is, in quest of a bottomless love. The presence of the squiggle deters the main character’s move, but later, an inverse of events will happen.

The mathematical symbols appear to relay deeper meanings. The dot is important in forming a line. Thus, the story embraces the point wherein two lovers meet for such a reason. The line looks for someone whom he can be with, neither justifying lust nor perhaps a love at first sight, as the main grounds, but because without her, his life won’t be complete. 

The central theme of the story is: In the struggle for love, what counts is the way of fighting onward through the sacrifice and concentration carded up and winning for that purpose, than cheating at the tiptoes of the test but triumphing badly.

Juster’s means of slapping mathematical symbols for steady motion of events and colliding the quenches of the main character emphasizes that even two unlike people can love each other. He also used sensory impressions, such as “You’re the beginning and the end, the hub, the core and the quintessence” (page 225), and “I’m dependable. I know where I’m going. I’ve got dignity!” (page 226), which appeal to the senses, emotions, and imaginations of the readers.

These elements, along with other techniques, combine to make The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics a mesmeric story, and an exemplar of an undoubtful willpower towards love. As time pass by, love binds two people destined for each other, and the audacity, vigor and guts are a must, for these are the backbones of an exultant courtship.
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