This story was very interesting to me since it showed how this generation only relied on technology to function every single day. The machine in ” The machine stops” provided everything for the humans down to artificial air and isolated rooms so everyone could communicate in but still not have that natural human interaction that people should have. The machine is looked upon as a god which is almost sickening since it’s forcing the citizens to isolate themselves and always function inside a computerized setting. The mother (Vashit) really idolizes the machine she holds the book like a bible and wishes nobody to even think about speaking down on it. She loves to be isolated and it seems to not bother her to go visit her son every time he asked her to, it is almost as if she liked to see her own son unhappy which gave her pride towards the machine since it allows her to see him and others from a distance.
The story takes place in a era where earth has been destroyed to the point that most living things can’t survive on hence why people depend on the machine as their only life source to sustain humanity. This society no longer believes in physical gatherings, why are all functions done in one room? I think it makes the citizens grow distant from one another. This also makes them really lazy and too dependent which can be a bad thing in the future. I don’t under why vashti and other people fear traveling the world and prefer to stay isolated in their room as if they are bound and not allowed to leave. Since her son won’t speak to her since she avoids him she finally takes the time to go see him which brings us to her plane ride. This shows me that even on the flight everyone has a small room to keep isolated in which still seems weird in my opinion. They keep metal shades on the window to avoid letting the sun touch them as if it would burn them on contact……They almost remind me of vampires since they hate sunlight and anything natural.
Why is human contact almost obsolete? I don’t understand why when people looked outside the window and observed the outside view of mountains and seas their only response was “no ideas here” and shut the blind in disgust. This shows that the machine has really taken away the human mind to think freely and be open minded. Kuno the son seems to be the only open mind human in this society and questions why his mother praises the book and the machine as if it helps her. She fails to realize that the machine controls you and this makes Kuno upset. He happened to walk the the earth without pro mission and got in trouble for it. He then realized that the machine has slowly stopped since it didn’t bother to kill him as it would usually do if a citizen broke the law. He was pretty smart since it took a while for the other citizens to start to see the system.
