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Definition of Paradox
A paradox is a figure of speech that seems to contradict itself, but which, upon further examination, contains some kernel of truth or reason. Oscar Wilde's famous declaration that "Life is... read full definition
A paradox is a figure of speech that seems to contradict itself, but which, upon further examination, contains some kernel of truth or reason. Oscar... read full definition
A paradox is a figure of speech that seems to contradict itself, but which, upon further examination, contains some kernel... read full definition
Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Unmoved:
In Millat and Magid's argument in Chapter 17, their different beliefs prevent any progress in convincing one another. The narrator describes this impasse by alluding to Zeno's paradox of the arrows:
They seem to make no progress. The cynical might say they don’t even move at all—that Magid and Millat are two of Zeno’s [...] arrows, occupying a space equal to themselves and, what is scarier, equal to Mangal Pande’s, equal to Samad Iqbal’s. Two brothers trapped in the temporal instant. Two brothers who pervert all attempts to put dates to this story, to track these guys, to offer times and days, because there isn’t, wasn’t, and never will be any duration. In fact, nothing moves. Nothing changes. They are running at a standstill. Zeno’s paradox.
Zeno, a Greek philosopher from the fifth century B.C.E., is famous for his observations of apparent paradoxes in the natural world. In his paradox of the arrows, he considers that if motion always takes some time, and if time is made up of a flowing continuum of instantaneous moments, then in any given moment, an object cannot move and can only occupy space, because no time passes inside of a single instant. Thus an arrow shot from a bow cannot move, because it cannot move in any single instant. But arrows in real life clearly can move, resulting in a paradox.
Similarly, the narrator uses the paradox to describe how Millat and Magid cannot move each other in their argument. Just as the arrows are constrained to a physical space equal to themselves in any given moment, the brothers are trapped in their own ideological spaces. To go a step further, they are stuck in the same ideological spaces also argued over by Samad and even Mangal Pande. They continue to have the same arguments over time, yet no time seems to pass, and no movement can take place.
The narrator continues to unpack Zeno's paradox quite thoroughly after the passage above. This analysis plays off a common interpretation in later Greek philosophy, whereby time is not split into separate instances, but space and time are united into "the One" through which objects can move as normal. This allows the narrator to argue that dividing life into parts (like racial divisions) results in motion and change being impossible. The allusion to the paradox displays how ideological differences prevent progress over time.
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