Neuromancer Conclusion

The ending of Neuromancer was somewhat of a disappointment for me. Not only is Case sent back to the Sprawl with no repercussions, but Molly, who had been the strong female figure in the novel, disappears without any reasonable explanation beyond “IT’S THE WAY I’M WIRED I GUESS” (267). The people of the Sprawl seem nonchalant about Case’s return. Ratz, one of the few people Case expected to recognize him, simply shrugs and says “Night City is not a place one returns to, artiste” (268).
In the last chapter, Case confronts the Matrix and proclaims that he does not need it (270). He uses the shuriken, a gift from Molly he had never used, on his wall screen. The shuriken, originally intended to use against humans, becomes a weapon against technology, a statement that Case had reformed. But despite the fact that this is Case’s revelation and point of growth, I can’t help but miss his cyberaddiction. His incessant link to cyberspace was one of the most prominent characteristics that made Case who he was. The destruction of this quality makes Case less interesting of a person (although, I note that in a world where everything is run by technology, an individual who says no to the Matrix is a rarity).
The relationship between Molly and Case was also something I had always expected and desired to see. After all, when two protagonists of the opposite sex spend an entire 300 pages working together, one expects some sort of growth in relationship. This seemed to happen gradually, as Molly opens up during the mission that Case was one good thing about her situation. However, at the very end of the novel, Gibson makes it clear that it was a failed romance with the line “[Case] never saw Molly again” (271). She, along with the technology that Case abandons, disappears.

Neuromancer Frameworks

In William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the reader is immersed in a world of cybernetic fantasy. Gibson uses extensive metaphor and imagery to create a place where the lines between cyberspace and reality are nonexistent. This represents the main character’s, Case, own psychological psychosis- his inability to tell the difference between what happens in the matrix and what happens tangibly.
Gibson frequently compares the city to the matrix, drawing the two together to insinuate that the two, one subsiding in reality and one subsiding in cyberspace, are virtually indistinguishable. The metaphor in “Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…” (51) liken “clusters and constellations of data” to “city lights”. Analogies like these meld the two worlds together.
Cyberspace is also set parallel to the mind; the cybernetic matrix an equivalent to the brain’s matrix. In the quote,
“He knew that the trodes he used and the little plastic tiara dangling from a simstim deck were basically the same, and that the cyberspace matrix was actually a drastic simplification of the human sensorium, at least in terms of presentation, but simstim itself struck him in a gratuitous multiplication of flesh input” (55)
Gibson makes the similarities of the cyberspace matrix and the human sensorium stark, even going as far to say that the matrix was a simplification of the mind instead of a separate entity.
While comparisons between cyberspace and reality are fine, the protagonist is plagued by one of the differences. Case initially found himself trapped in his flesh when his neurons are damaged by unhappy clients. He was, at least until his neurons are repaired by a later character, no longer able to be a cyberspace cowboy because of this. Gibson uses frequent references to “flesh” to capture Case’s helplessness. “A field of flesh” (46) and “flesh of lost summers” (48) were such quotes that exemplifies this reoccurring motif.