First, to read my thoughts on Vinge's Rainbows End, as a complete work, follow the link here.
Robert Gu, early in the book, finds himself with a dilemma of sorts, in regards to his Alzheimer's disease and the cure: Stay sick and die a famous poet who had Alzheimer's, or get better but lose your talent for poetry. Unfortunately for Robert, the decision has been made and the question answered before it was even asked. Robert, a legend in the world of poetry, had been suffering from Alzheimer's and dying. The cure for this degenerative disease has restored his mind, but it could not do so without some side-effects. Being capable of coherent thought and memory, Robert wants to continue his works of poetry by writing about his fall and rise from Alzheimer's There is only one problem, Robert has lost his talent to make the words sing.
The dramatic question in Robert's plot line is whether he will get his talent back or can he learn to accept his new life and his new-found affinity for technology. Robert's loss change his fundamentally and as the book progresses, he becomes a person that people can actually consider pleasant company. This is a slow, unintentional progress for Robert but slowly develops as he learns to accept his circumstances and be content with the choice that was taken for him.
I find it interesting that, only after he truly learns to be happy with what ability he has in his new life, Robert is presented with the idea that he might have his cake and eat it too. At the end of the novel Robert finds himself wondering if he might not be able to have both his poetic genius and his knack for technological things. Vinge leaves this as an open question. I think he knows that technology and beauty do not have to be separate entities, and this is the true epiphany Robert has as the novel closes.
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