Author Archives: Kayla Brofsky

Brave New World 1998

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I enjoyed watching the 1998 film version of Brave New World. All the visions I had of the World State’s appearance was completely different from what I pictured it to be. The biggest difference between the film and novel was Bernard’s character. In the novel Bernard was the outcast of the World State, he was ugly and much different from the other Alpha Pluses. Bernard didn’t associate with the other Alpha’s. In the film it seemed as if Bernard was popular and well liked. Bernard’s big change was a major part of the novel, but I feel like its okay that Bernard’s change was left out of the film. There was already so much going on in the film that if Bernard’s change was shown the film would probably be three hours long. Another difference between the film and novel was that in the film Bernard and Lenina weren’t shown as the two main characters but more like two regular, ordinary citizens.

In the film it was shown that everyone goes to a club and its where they are promiscuous. The novel doesn’t mention a club, so I’m thinking the club is where they have the “orgy porgies”.

One of the similarities between the film and novel is how much control the World State has over it’s citizens. “Everyone belongs to everyone” is constantly broadcasted in the World State, all the citizens repeat that phrase whenever its played. In the film Lenina says “promiscuity is a citizens duty”. The World State has all the same values in the novel and film except one of the most important parts, Ford. Ford was the religion of the World State, all the citizens would make the sign of a “T”. In the film Ford was not shown. I thought that it should have been shown because of the significance it has in the novel.

In both the film and novel Lenina and Bernard take a trip to the Savage Reservation. In the novel the Savage Reservation was in a village called Malpais. I pictured the Savage Reservation to be like a village where people lived outdoors, almost like the Indian reservations there are in real life. I pictured the people to look like how they were explained in the novel. The Savage Reservation in the film was like a trailer park in an industrial area and nothing like a village. Bernard and Lenina’s experience at the Savage Reservation in the film and novel were completely different. In the film Bernard and Lenina’s helicopter is riding over the Savage Reservation and the people are throwing things at the helicopter. Their helicopter then crashes and the Savages begin to attack Bernard and Lenina. Their experience in the novel was much different, it was a good experience for Bernard and they weren’t attacked by anyone.

In the film when John is being conditioned “kill Bernard Marx, will harm society” was repeatedly shown. I thought this was strange because Bernard’s character in the film was shown as a normal regular citizen, not someone who has enemies or someone who should be killed. I think this would have made more sense in the novel because Bernard was a menace to the society and he brought problems to the Controller by bringing John and Linda to the World State.

All in all, I enjoyed both the novel and the film. I think that even though the film was much different from the novel it did portray the World State properly and how it functions. The viewers of the film without reading the novel can definitely understand the values of the World State.

 

D-503 lost his purpose

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I am relieved to have finished We. I thought this book was just very confusing. The few beginning entries were okay but as We progressed I completely lost interest. D-503’s emotions towards I-330 caused him to lose his whole purpose and main reason for writing these journal entries. I feel that once D-503’s love situation was introduced, thats where I began to lose interest and became confused. I thought there were too many things going on.

 

 

In D-503’s Thirty-second Entry, he writes “do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man: hence … No, this is not what I mean. I know you know this. I am asking: have you ever really believed it; believed it totally, not with your mind, but with your body; have you ever felt that one day the fingers holding this very page will be icy, yellow…” (187)   This creeped me out and it was weird, it seemed as if D-503 was directly speaking to the reader and trying to get a message across. This doesn’t have much significance, I just felt like sharing how I felt about that particular paragraph.

Although I didn’t really enjoy We,  the final few entries gave meaning to the whole story. It shows how much of an impact one person can have on your life, something positive or negative. D-503 met I-330 and his life completely changed. His whole purpose was to write these journal entries so they can be passed onto others so they could learn about One State. D-503’s infatuation of I-330 is where he lost his focus on what he was supposed to be doing. The final entries showed that D-503 was realizing that he lost the main purpose of writing the entries. He became too caught up in his own feelings for I-330 that he wasnt putting much effort into the journal, and used it just for his own purposes. I think D-503 knew that he wasnt following exactly what he should have done, occasionally D-503 would question things that he sees or does.

 

I found it hard to write a blog on this reading. I disliked this book, it was hard for me to readbecause I was so uninterested and that I found myself just reading but not fully understanding what I was reading. That made me miss important events that went on throughout We.  Because of this I had to re–read a lot. I feel like Zamyatin switched up the story too much for my liking. One situation is D-503 and I-330 happy together, than D-503 is without I-330 and he is questioning everything. 

Now that I’ve read both Brave New World and We, I do see that there are many similarities between the two. I enjoyed Brave New World more. I thought it was much easier to comprehend and I liked the format and the characters of Brave New World.

 

 

 

 

 

D-503’s questions

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From this weeks reading, we as the readers see changes in D-503 and how/what he is writing. In the beginning of We, D-503 states that he is writing this journal for the people who will be entering into One State in the future. Now D-503 is writing more about his own feelings, experiences and conflicts in his life such as his relationships with I-330 and O-90.

D-503 starts to question why exactly he is writing this, and what it’s real purpose is. “Why should I record all these absurd “dreams”, closets, endless corridors? I am saddened to see that . . . I am producing some sort of a fantastic adventure novel. Ah, if it were really nothing but a novel, and not my present life” (102-103) I am seeing that D-503 is now beginning to change the purpose of the journal because of the new life he is living concerning his love of I-330.

One conflict D-503 has is, when he is wondering if the life he lives is for himself or for One State.  “we have the scales: on one side, a gram, on the other a ton; on one side “I”, on the other “We”, the One State. Is it not clear, then, that to assume that the “I” can have some “rights” in relation to the State is exactly like assuming that a gram can balance the scale against the ton? Hence, the division: rights to the ton, duties to the gram. (115) I think what D-503 means when referring to grams and tons is how people are treated in the One State. One single person by themselves is considered to be something small, like a gram. A group of many people together are referred to a ton. Mathematically, a gram is something that has a very small weight. A ton, is 2,000 pounds, something that is big, which is why according to D-503 “tons” are viewed as more important to One State. “Rights to the ton, duties to the gram” (115) I think he feels like individuals are not supported in One State, and its main concern is all the people and not just one person.

We find out that D-503 is completely in love with I-330. He thinks about her all day long, everything he does she is the one he is thinking about and whenever he’s not with her, he is just thinking of the next time he will be with her. He is basically obsessed with her. When he is going to see her he starts breathing heavily and his body becomes weak.

Something that confused me was when D-503 “dies”. He was going to see I-330 in her apartment, but when he found out that she was not there, he automatically became nervous and thought that she was with someone else in their apartment. D-503 goes into the closet and dies for “no more than five or ten seconds” (96) After that D-503 wakes up and sees the doctor then I-330 appears. I was confused. Does D-503 actually really die then come back to life? Or did the thoughts of I-330 being with someone else besides him make him go crazy and he just thought he died?

Brave New World vs. We

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After this weeks reading, I am seeing many similarities between Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The first similarity I noticed was how, both societies, One State and the World State were both organized with rules that should be followed.  Another thing that is similar is that in One State, when you want to do something that is not formally allowed, you get a pink slip, something that asks permission to do something. This reminded me of the World State because, everything was controlled and there weren’t many things the people could do besides being promiscuous and participating in orgies. Each society also values something, in the World State soma is valued and in One State math plays a major role in society and in D-503’s life. I see that they are similar in these ways.

My first impression of D-503 was that he is an outsider. He has negative feelings on participating in society. “and through the glass walls of my algebraic world, again that eyelash- something unpleasant that I must do today” (pg 34) This shows that D-503 doesn’t really want to be apart of whatever is going on. Another way that shows D-503 is different is that  “I hid behind my newspaper- it seemed to me that everyone was staring at me” (pg 35) Everyday he writes in his diary, which is what We is based off of. He meets I-330 and he follows her around and she even gets him to miss work. I think that I-330 is going to be a bad influence on D-503. So far I’m not really seeing any problems with D-503. Just that he dislikes doing anything other than math.

We are also introduced to I-330. First off, I thought that I-330 is going to be an important character because of how she acts. She can be seen as the rebel so far. She doesn’t follow all the rules she’s supposed to. She smokes and drinks alcohol which is not allowed in One State. I-330 is also very sneaky. I-330 says to D-503 “to be original is to be in some way distinct from others. Hence, to be original is to violate equality” (pg 28) This shows that I-330 doesn’t really care about the rules of One State and that she is just going to do whatever she wants.

I am confused on what these “names” or codes mean. I-330 ? O-90 ? D-503? R-13 ? I know that they are names, of characters in We but what do they stand for?

Another question I have is, what’s D-503’s deal with radical negative one? “This irrational number had grown into me like something foreign, alien, terrifying. It devoured me- it was impossible to conceive, to render harmless, because it was outside ratio” (pg 39) I think D-503 dislikes this number maybe because since its an irrational number, it keeps going on and on and its not a normal number. It’s also “unsettled” so this made me think that D-503 likes having everything set the way he feels comfortable with and that he doesn’t like knowing there’s the unknown that exists. Or maybe he dislikes this because its a math equation that he can’t figure out?

Mixed thoughts.

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After reading Brave New World, I am surprised, confused and disappointed. The ending was not at all how I expected it to be. In the beginning chapters of the story, I thought Bernard was the protagonist. He was different from everyone and I thought he was going to rebel from the World State and be the “hero” by the end of the book but that was not the case. I then continued reading and from the middle chapters, I saw that Bernard’s character was changing. He was starting to act like everyone else around him, he was following the rules of the World State like acting promiscuously and he started taking soma. All these thoughts I had about Bernard really disappointed me, especially when reading chapter fifteen.

In chapter fifteen, we learn that Linda dies and John turns the hospital into complete chaos. John begins screaming, he punches people in their faces and even throws out the supply of soma out of the window. All the people couldn’t believe what John was doing. Bernard says “he’s mad, they’ll kill him. Ford help him!” (pg 193) John shouted “free, free” “men at last!” “you’re free!” (pg 193) while he was throwing out the soma.  I was happy that John was doing this because I felt like he was giving everyone a reality check, which they didn’t understand. He was trying to show them that soma is not everything in life, he thinks soma is like poison. All these people are so caught up in following what’s “right and wrong” in life, that I think they’re not even really living a life because they are all already “predestined” and everything they’re supposed to do is already laid out for them to do like taking soma, participating in orgies, believing in “Ford” and being promiscuous.

I was really disappointed with Bernard on page 193. John was supposed to be Bernard’s friend, he brought back John and Linda to the World State and brought them to the Director. I knew that Bernard did this for revenge on the Director, but I also thought that Bernard actually somewhat cared for John and Linda? In previous readings we found out that Bernard was only using them both for his own purposes, to gain popularity.

I wanted to think that Bernard would have turned out differently by the end of the story. I truly thought Bernard was going to be a leader, but in reality he is actually just like everyone else, a follower. From pages 193-194 Bernard has an internal conflict where he is watching all this chaos in the hospital go on and how John is acting and he thinks of helping the others and he is “urged by a sudden impulse, ran forward to help them; then thought better of it and halted; then, ashamed, stepped forward again then again thought better of it and was standing in an agony of humiliated indecision” (pg 193) He starts thinking about how John is going crazy and taking all his built up emotions and anger out on the other people. I thought Bernard was going to step in and be a man and help the others and after going back and forth with what to do,  but he just decides to play the victim.

Although, I wanted Bernard to be the hero, I liked how Huxley changed up the story. It would be too predictable for Bernard to be the hero and the ending was definitely unexpected. I think this made the ending of the story more interesting, then how it may have been with Bernard being the hero, like a “happy ever after” I think that would have been boring.

I finished reading with the question.. What happened to Lenina?

Something I learned in sociology class was Karl Marx’s Conflict View of Social Change. This concept was “conflict is progress and progress is conflict” this concept reminded me of Brave New World.  Bernard and John both brought conflict to the World State, Bernard was unlike the others in his caste system, Alpha Plus and at first he didn’t live the way he was supposed to, which caused conflict. Bernard brought John to the World State, which also caused conflict. When there was an attempt at progress, there were more conflicts that followed.

 

A New Bernard

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Chapter ten opens with the Director speaking about Bernard. The Director says “the greater a man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted” (pg 137) I took this as the Director feeling very threatened by Bernard and how he is different from the World State. I think what the Director meant by “the greater his power to lead astray” is that because Bernard is different and he’s not trying to be the same as everyone else, he will try to influence others on having a different life, outside the World State. We as readers know what Bernard feels about the caste systems, promiscuity, personal relationships and family. I think that the Director is scared Bernard will try to convince people to join with him and rebel against the World State.

These concepts of family and personal relationships, which are something very normal to have in real life, is actually forbidden in the World State. There is no such thing as “family” because there is no natural birth, but the Bokanovsky process. Promiscuity is what should go on in this society, I think this is so people don’t start having feelings for one another. What I took from the Director saying “It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted” (pg 137) is that its the right thing to do to send Bernard away to Iceland, so he will be gone from the World State. I think what the Director meant by “corrupted” is that because Bernard is a smart person he may have an influence on others on disagreeing with how the World State is “operated” and if people start seeing that, they will corrupt the World State and want to change it.

Continuing reading chapter ten, Bernard gets back from his “holiday” and meets with the Director and many other people in the World State. Bernard brings Linda and John with him. I think this was to try and sabotage the Director for sending him away. Linda walks through the door and everyone in the room was horrified, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Linda starts calling the Director by his real name Tomakin, she says that he made her have a baby! (pg 140) The Director automatically starts making it like Linda is crazy and denies everything because he is in front of all the people of the World State. John then walks in and yells “My Father” (pg 140) This revealed that even the Director of the World State, doesn’t follow the rules, he fathered a child, without Bokanovsky process. This really showed the inconsistencies and the conflicts of the World State. Bernard is standing up for himself and I feel that it’s his own personal payback when he brings Linda and John to the Director.

After reading chapter eleven, I found many aspects interesting. On page 148 Bernard writes about John “The Savage”, Bernard writes about how John doesn’t want to take soma, and he writes about Linda, John’s mother. What I found interesting was that Bernard doesn’t even write out the word mom, but he writes m – -. This concept of family is still so foreign to Bernard, but he did imagine what life would be like having a real family in previous chapters.

Another thing that interested me was when Dr. Gaffney, Miss Keate and The Provost were all giving John “the Savage” a tour of Lupton’s Tower and the school. While walking by the school library, John asks if the students read Shakespeare and quickly the Head Mistress answers with “certainly not” while blushing. (pg 150) Dr. Gaffney says the library “contains only books of reference. If our young people need distraction, they can get it at the feelies. We don’t encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements.” (pg 150) In the real world Shakespeare is highly read and a very popular writer, and when John asks about Shakespeare the others act like Shakespeare doesn’t even exist.

What I got from this weeks reading is that Bernard’s character is changing.  He is starting to associate with others, but he did say he liked being alone.  He is becoming popular with the people around him. I also saw that Lenina is changing and she says “because you see, Fanny, I like him” (pg 153) Before Fanny was always following what she was supposed to do in the World State, not wanting to be different like Bernard.

 

 

Brave New World (Ch. 6-9)

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After reading I was happy to find out that Bernard was the main focus. I liked Bernard’s character and how he was different from the others, he knows that the society he’s living in is not particularly “right”. I felt that Bernard’s behavior was not at all how I expected him to be. I expected Bernard to just be quiet, keeping his feelings to himself and not associating with others, but that was not the case with Lenina.

Bernard and Lenina go on an “adventure” on a helicopter. I noticed how eager Bernard was for wanting to see the world in a different way, he wanted to go close to the water, insisting on “stopping his propeller and hovering  . . . within a hundred feet of the waves”. (pg 89) Lenina was scared of going that close to the water. Bernard was embracing his experience of seeing the water and Lenina referred to it as “horrible”. I feel like Lenina is being very stubborn and closed-minded on wanting to explore with Bernard. Lenina, in my opinion is very stuck in her ways and wants to continue to follow how everyone else in her society is. She doesn’t want to think about anything but how her life is right now, and she’s not open for change how Bernard is so open for change.

 Bernard and Lenina were having a conversation about their lives and Bernard is trying to convince Lenina that the way they are living is not a good and “happy life” and for her to come to the Savage Reservation with him. I think that out of all people Bernard has ever associated with, he sees the most potential in Lenina for wanting to explore a different life.  Bernard says “don’t you wish you were free Lenina?” and Lenina’s response was far from what he wanted with “I don’t know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays” (pg 90) I think that Lenina is completely in denial with what she sees as “happy”. Her view of “happiness” is completely artificial in my opinion. When she wants to feel “happy” she takes soma. Lenina probably has never ever felt true happiness in her life because she is just taking a drug when she wants to “feel” happy. Bernard says to Lenina ” But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way . . . in your own way, for example, not in everybody else’s way”. (pg 90)
Bernard and Lenina go to Malpais, a place where life is completely different from the World State. They see all the people. Men, women, babies, old and young. Lenina automatically says “I don’t like it, I don’t like it” “but how can they live like this?” (pg 105) She thinks all these people are crazy for the way they are living. Lenina sees an old man and says “what’s the matter with him?” (pg 106) She sees looking old as something that is horrible. This is completely out of what Lenina knows because in the Bokanovsky Process you can make a person and pick out what you want them to look and act like. She is not used to seeing other people besides the ones in her caste system. She doesn’t know anything besides the World State. I noticed that Lenina kept asking Bernard “what’s wrong with this person?” “why are they doing that?”, this shows that Bernard has knowledge on life outside the World State and he is desperately wanting to escape from that.
As they continue walking through the village of Malpais, Lenina is seeing things she has never ever seen before in her life. She repeatedly wiped herself with her handkerchief. I saw this as symbolism of Lenina wiping off her thoughts of ever wanting to have a different life. She saw everything these people did as disgusting and terrible.  Lenina hated her experience of walking through Malpais and seeing all the differences of life. She was going “crazy” and was wanting to take soma. She then realized that she forgot to take soma with her to Malpais. This shows how dependent Lenina is of soma. She can’t function properly without soma. I think that if she were to just lay off of the soma she will see things more differently.
The concept of family is introduced first handedly to both Lenina and Bernard. They see a mother and her baby. Both Lenina and Bernard dont have any concept of family because the World State blocks out having any type of “family” or “personal” relationships. Bernard is amazed from seeing this kind of love and says “what a wonderfully intimate relationship, and what an intensity of feeling it must generate! I often think one may have missed something in not having had a mother. And perhaps you’ve missed something in not being a mother, imagine yourself sitting there with a little baby of your own” (pg 107) I really liked this line from Bernard, he was speaking straight from his heart, I felt that he was being very real and vulnerable with Lenina and his feelings about family. I think Bernard was dreaming of how life would be like having a mother or a child. Lenina then says “Bernard! How can you? Let’s go away. I don’t like it” (pg 107) This made me really dislike Lenina.
After reading chapters 6-9 I am starting to like this book more. I’ve grown to really like Bernard and how he is daring to be different from the usual and how he doesn’t care what everyone else thinks of him.

 

Brave New World Chapters 1-5

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In the beginning, chapter 1 of Brave New World Huxley explains what the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre is. It was described to be something like a factory. I pictured hundreds of people working with machines all day long. I then learned about the director and that is it people who are being “made” in the “factory”. These people have every aspect of themselves picked out and controlled by others such as their caste, predestination, the colors that they wear and from that, their whole life is determined and it will always stay that way. Once you’re predestined and set in a caste, you’re set for the rest of your life. I feel this is like a puzzle, mixing and matching pieces until something fits and comes together. Something like a person.

After reading Chapter 1,  Brave New World reminded me of The Machine Stops. The “Bokanovsky Process” was something where you could control fertilization and reproduction “one egg, one embryo, one adult . . . a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds”. (pg 17) I thought that the “Bokanovsky Process” was crazy, that one egg could turn into ninety-six! Imagine it was really like that in real life and someone can give birth to ninety-six children? WOW.

I felt this process was similar to how the Machine in The Machine Stops controls every aspect of life. The Bokanovsky process and the Machine in my opinion are similar because they are both controlling life, Bokanovsky Process controls reproduction which makes life and the Machine is those peoples lives from birth to death.

In chapter 3 we are introduced to Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx. These are the first two people Huxley introduces, stating their names and information about them. Before Lenina and Bernard, Huxley was referring to the other people but not giving anyone specific names. Huxley describes Bernard Marx as an Alpha plus which is the highest caste a person could be. This sounds like its a good thing me, but then Huxley writes that Bernard spends “most of his time by himself-alone” . . . “why are people so beastly to him? I think he’s rather sweet.” (pg 50) This then led me to think that Bernard is very different from the other people. Huxley then writes that when Bernard was being “put together” there was some sort of a defect/mistake. So I then found out that he is very much different from the others in his caste and society. Fanny describes Bernard as ugly and “so small” and that “smallness was so horribly and typically low-caste” (pg 51). Bernard knows he is different from the others and knows their opinions on him which is why he is making himself an outcast from the Alpha’s. In this society, if you are in a high caste that is good and people look up to you, unlike Bernard which people look down on. This is leading me to think that Bernard is going to be a major part of Brave New World.

I think that the first two chapters of Brave New World were interesting with describing the different rooms and levels but then continuing reading I lost interest. It was hard for me to read the long conversation between Fanny and Lenina (pgs 52-62). I felt that it was boring.

So far, I’m not enjoying this story. Although the descriptions and imagery Huxley gave was good and I was able to picture everything, I had a hard time focusing while reading and I was thinking about The Machine Stops because I think the way of life is very similar for the characters in these stories. I hope this story picks up and gets better.

My Utopia

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 I couldn’t really think of a story of a utopia to write, so I am just writing about my own life, as my utopia.My utopia would be a simple world. I would be working with a job that I love doing to support myself and my family for the rest of our lives. I’d have a comfortable life, living in a nice house. I would be living somewhere with a tropical climate, where there is no winter. The weather around me would be 75-80 degrees. Nice weather everyday and nothing but days laying on a beach with the sun shining down on you. There would be no such thing as rain or cold weather and there would be happiness surrounding everyone everywhere. 

 

In my utopia the world would be a better place. There is no violence, no crime and no pollution. All people everywhere are equal and treat each other with respect. There would be no such thing as someone living with hunger, poverty and there would be no one that is homeless. My utopia would also consist of all stray animals having a home. 

 

Education would be available to everyone and everyone has a fair chance of getting any type of job they would want. Nowadays college education is expensive which makes it hard for many people to attend college which stops many people from getting the educations they should have and need. I would make getting a college education more easy for the average person because everyone will have the ability to attend college. There would be no limits on what a person can do with their lives. Even if one person is not as smart or educated as someone else they will not be looked down on.  All people would be happy with their career choices, unlike modern times where many people are unhappy with their jobs. Money would not be a problem, which is a problem for millions of people across the world. Everything would be reasonable for people no matter how much money one person makes. 

 

There would be no such thing as sickness. All people would live long, happy and healthy lives. There would be cures for all sicknesses and diseases. There would be advances in technology and medicine everyday. People all over the world would be doing everything to better their communities, lives and make the world a better place. No war, no fights and no bad feelings towards others. People help out one another. 

I think that my view on a utopian society and world will be similar to a lot of people’s ideas too. Many people want peace, money, education, health and happiness. With these things I think that the way the world is right now if all people are working together we can achieve my ideas of what a utopia really is.  I don’t think it will be too hard to achieve this utopia because it is just a normal life with positive things around everyone.

 

 

 

The Machine Stops

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I enjoyed this reading a lot. Forster gives a great description of where/how the story is taking place. From the opening sentence of The Machine Stops,  Forster starts by telling the reader to imagine what is going on. From that point on I pictured everything that was happening while reading. I got a feeling the room was isolated. Vashti, the protagonist is introduced. After reading the first page I thought that Vashti was an invalid. I then continued reading and I realized she was not an invalid but it was almost like she is because of the Machine. The Machine is the only life that these people have. They are in the Machine from birth to death(which they can choose when they die because of Euthanasia). This Machine enables people to live in a room and just press a button for whatever they may want or need. “There were buttons and switches everywhere – buttons to call for food, for music, for clothing. There was the hot bath button.” page 3. The use of buttons for these people allowed them to never have to leave or wonder what a different life is because they had everything inside this room. Vashti was even able to control when she would sleep. By pressing a button to make the room dark Vashti would instantly fall asleep and would awaken by pressing the button to make the room light.

On the third page the readers are introduced to Kuno, Vashti’s son. Kuno wanted to explore life outside of the Machine and he rebelled from his mother because of that. He was an outcast from the people living in the Machine because his views and feelings on outside life were the opposite of what the Machine led others to believe. Kuno wanted something different for his mother, he wanted her to “visit the surface of the earth”. Vashti puts the relationship with her son behind the Machine. Vashti acts very stubbornly toward Kuno, not wanting to listen to what he has to say. Kuno is begging his mother to come out of the Machine and experience the “surface of the earth” but Vashti says no. Why would Vashti need to come out if all she had to do was press a button to get something? That sounds like a pretty easy but boring, sad life. She was still able to communicate with others and do normal things, but she was in a room with nothing at all except an armchair and a reading desk. If I was stuck in a room my whole entire life I would wonder why life is like this. Why the outside world was forbidden? I think that I would go crazy not having contact or even knowing what life outside the Machine was like.

Through chapter 2 of the story, Homelessness is introduced. The reader learns that these people are completely mesmerized by the Machine. Vashti says “the sunlight almost touched me” implying its a bad thing.  “I have been threatened with homelessness.” Homelessness means that if anyone has any association outside of the Machine they are basically left to death. I felt this whole concept of homelessness was crazy, the people were made to believe that even getting a little feel of sunlight from the outside world is like poison.

On page 11 Kuno tells his mother she is “beginning to worship the Machine” which she quickly denies. But I feel that Kuno is right. Vashti says she doesnt worship the Machine, but she doesn’t know what anything is like besides the Machine so she cant worship anything else because its all she knows in life.  The Machine gives these people a book, which is the only item they have, the Machine writes what is right and wrong and what all these people should believe in almost like a religious book that they read everyday.

After reading The Machine Stops, I realized how technology controls peoples lives completely. The Machine gave everyone anything they ever needed. If someone asked for Euthanasia, they were given it. If you wanted food you pressed a button. The Machine controls these peoples lives in every aspect, these people depended on the machine for everything. Their whole entire life was the machine. The Machine gives “lectures” for people to learn about. Whenever someone starts to have a thought the Machine stops it. “Sometimes my ideas are interrupted by a slight jarring noise.”page 21. This is how the Machine filters these peoples thoughts, ideas and feelings and because they have no knowledge of other life is they think nothing of it. In my opinion the Machine “dumbs-down” the people because it leads them to believe there is nothing outside of the machine, no outside life whatsoever. Whatever the outside life may be, the machine makes it out to be a negative, horrible place. The Machine has complete control of the people it tells them what is true.

At the end of the story the Machine “crashes”. All the people are left displaced with nothing. It shows how much the machine was really depended on which I think the theme Forster was trying to imply is that technology is everything in life. The people had no idea what to do with themselves or how to act and it was complete chaos. They had to experience what real sunlight is, they werent able to press any buttons to fix their problems. Imagine that whenever you had a problem in life all you had to do was press a button and all your problems were fixed?

In real life, if you have a question, you go on the internet to look for the answer. Cell phones enable you to communicate with others by texting and talking on the phone without actually having a face to face conversation with someone. Imagine how life was before cell phones? You would have to go out and speak to someone. This really shows how much technology is depended on in our world.

All in all, although this story was long I didn’t mind it. I really enjoyed reading The Machine Stops. It was interesting. I like how E. M. Forster writes and I would like to read another one of Forster’s stories. The imagery and descriptive language really kept me wanting to continue reading.