In Neuromancer by Gibson, the main character, Case, entertains two different frames of mind within the book; one a depressed and hopeless state, and one a free, unlimited, bordering-on-ecstatic state. Case's frames of mind are exemplified by and reflected in his surroundings; the grim emotions come out in the Sprawl, and his exuberant feelings surface in cyberspace.

     The Sprawl is a desolate place; a part of town where the dregs of society gather in an immense cloud of suffering and self-loathing. The Sprawl is aptly named, since quite a few of its regular inhabitants are almost always intoxicated and physically out of commission. Case, a former "console cowboy" who got his ability to surf the matrix destroyed, has nowhere else to turn but the Sprawl, since his life was cyberspace. Making runs for whoever would hire him was his job, he was good at it, and he never learned to do anything else. When he was expertly maimed by the people he double-crossed, he lost his life, metaphorically, and from that time on he slept in what was called a "coffin," which was appropriate because he was dead, in a way. "The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective. For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh." Case always considered the real "him" to be the entity that could go into cyberspace, and when he could no longer do it, all he had left was the thing he had the most contempt for: his body. In the Sprawl, Case "ran the loosest deals on the street" because he no longer cared what happened to him. He runs drug deals on the black market, hustling drugs to other people, which is symbolic that he is helping them to get away from the "prison" of the body by deadening their minds so much they don't know they're miserable. And Case takes drugs himself while in the Sprawl; destroying his liver and kidneys and other body parts wantonly, not caring because his body is not important. He is often seen in low-level places like the Chatsubo, a bar, and the Jarre de Thé, a coffeehouse, where he thinks about his depression and uselessness as he drinks and does drugs to the point of oblivion.

     Case's attitude changes completely when his disabilities are fixed and he can reenter cyberspace. In his operation, he is somehow biochemically rewired to be unable to get high when he takes most kinds of drugs. This is symbolic, because he doesn't need titilations of the body anymore to be happy; he has the matrix. Specifically, the part of cyberspace that contrasts with the Sprawl is the beach scene near the end of the book. He is alone on a dreamlike beach with his love, Linda Lee. Cyberspace is like a dream come true for Case; it has many parallels with dreams, for one, he has no body, and two, time is not like realtime. During his operation, Case had toxin sacs bound to the inside of his main arteries, putting a time limit on his talent and only making having it that much sweeter. He is almost a god in cyberspace, king of his domain. He is an expert at what he does. However, he commits the ultimate ironic action: he leaves cyberspace and Linda because it's not real. Back in the Sprawl, he dreamed of the matrix, but now that the matrix is accessible to him again, he "wakes up" and sees that it is cyberspace, not realspace, and that he must learn to live with his body in the real world, detestable though it may be.

[My comment: I got an A on this, and the teacher said "Wow! Strong summary!" but said I stretched it a little when I suggested giving other people drugs was Case's way of helping others get away from their prisons. It was a 40-minute timed response to the question "Many plays and novels use contrasting places (for example, two countries, two cities or towns, two houses, or the land and the sea) to represent opposed forces or ideas that are central to the meaning of the work. Choose a novel or a play that contrasts two such places. Write an essay explaining how the places differ, what each place represents, and how their contrast contributes to the meaning of the work."]