Knowledge

Through each of his main character's narrative threads, the author examines humans' innate thirst for knowledge. Because Antonius Diogenes's Cloud Cuckoo Land connects Konstance, Zeno, Seymour, Anna, and Omeir's disparate lives, the reader might refer to Aethon's tale for thematic guidance. In One, "Stranger, Whoever You Are, Open This To Learn What Will Amaze You," the narrator presents the first folio from the Diogenes codex. In this fragment, Diogenes writes to his niece: "maybe like all lunatics, the shepherd made his own truth, and so for him, true it was. But let us turn to his story now, and decide his sanity for ourselves" (11). Therefore, the truth of and the knowledge buried within the story is determined by each individual reader. Knowledge, then, is relative just as truth is relative.

The author expounds upon these notions in Konstance's narrative thread. Konstance has grown up believing that...