Cloud Cuckoo Land

Konstance is one of this book’s main protagonists. She has lived on the Argos her entire life, and throughout her upbringing she feels different than the others, especially due to her interest in Earth. Because she is taught that Earth is inhabitable because of climate change, her interest in the planet is partially driven by a desire to see what once was. Her primary source of conflict is that she must overcome her expectations and learn that those in positions of power often manipulate perceptions of reality.

Konstance is brave and intelligent. She questions her reality enough to learn that the Argos’s mission is false, even when it is difficult for her to willingly shatter her own reality. As she liberates herself from the Argos, Konstance also liberates herself from the burden of knowing everything, like Sybil. In the Epilogue, she wonders if her son can “sense [...] the precarity of” their lives (622)—precarity that, until she sheds the notion that everything is knowable, greatly upsets her. Konstance’s journey into maturity exemplifies her role in saving the Cloud Cuckoo Land folios, which symbolically illustrates the continuation of human life against all odds. Her storyline highlights the idea that although the type of information that survives throughout time cannot be predetermined, this information can still be a valuable tool for learning about the past and present.