The Dot and the Line

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (ISBN 1-58717-066-3) is a book written and illustrated by Norton Juster, first published by Random House in 1963. The story was inspired by Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, in which the protagonist visits a one-dimensional universe called Lineland, where women are dots and men are lines.

In 1965, famed animator Chuck Jones and the MGM Animation/Visual Arts studio adapted The Dot and the Line into a 10-minute animated short film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, narrated by Robert Morley with the narration almost verbatim to the book. The Dot and the Line won the 1965 Academy Award for Animated Short Film. It was entered into the Short Film Palme d'Or competition at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.

The cartoon was released as a special feature on the The Glass Bottom Boat DVD in 2005. The cartoon is also featured on the 2008 release of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection and the 2011 release of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1 Blu-ray box-set on the third disc as a special feature. In 2005, Robert Xavier Rodriguez made a musical setting of the book for narrator and chamber ensemble with projected images, and in 2011 he made a version for full orchestra.

Story
The story details a straight line who is hopelessly in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. The line, unable to fall out of love and willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, manages to bend himself and form an angle. He works to refine this new ability, creating shapes so complex that he has to label his sides and angles to keep his place. The dot realizes that she has made a mistake: what she had seen in the squiggle to be freedom and joy was nothing more than chaos and sloth. She leaves with the line, having realized that he has much more to offer, and the punning moral is presented: "To the vector belong the spoils."

Legacy
The Dot and the Line served as the inspiration for a collection of jewelry by designer Jane A. Gordon.