This week we are reading the story called “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster. The first paragraph starts with a descriptive introduction to where we are within the story setting. Based on this paragraph along I get an image of a very gloomy room almost in a sense like a jail cell with no ventilation the way it was phrased was “there are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. Then finally the main character is presented whom is Vashti.
What I got from the story was it took place within the future and everything is based on these machines that basically is almost a god. Their livelihood in even the way their families worked was based on them and the book. The machine guided them of how everything in the civilization to function. The machine basically took away all human feelings from the people. People were really allowed to even think fro themselves because even when they have a question they would have to look it up in the book. This book not only gave answers but also ordered them in how they should function.
Within this work everybody is also dependent on these machines almost like our current society today with computers but a worse obsession. Within our society today technology we use computers nonstop to the point some wouldn’t even walk out the door almost like the main character. She could never find the time to visit her son and she would just keep making up excuses. She made it seem almost like an addition problem with denial of how obsessed she was. She would defend it when her son criticized it. The people within that civilization were very much alike when it came to the machine’s they depended everything on them basically the machines is the way to utopia. The machines gave orders and controlled how everything functions even things like if they could have children they need permission. To show the perfect world from how their own earth compared to looked upon as unhappiness. It was seen as dark and ugly because they are humans that don’t use the machines.
Kuno on the other hand is a rebel that wants to break away from the machines he wants to feel more human to the point in which he travels to earth but is captured and threatened with homelessness by the machines. He wants to see how human live seeing the stars and breathe with his very own. He is the only one within the civilization that remembers that it was made by man compared to all that worships it.
This story made me think really deeply on also how our society slowly also is dependent on machines. as much as easier it provides us it is taking us over. people cant live without their phones, computer. and even doing basic task no more due to the dependence as much as it is suppose to make our lives easier. I cant help to think that one day our society might just turn similar to the story. It perfectly displayed utopia of how happiness is viewed and everyone being the same.
