The Machine Stops by E.M. Foster was an interesting read.  In a way it foreshadowed the future.  The Machine Stops basically showed the reader the way life will be in the future, especially with the fact that society depends so much on technology.  One today can’t go a day without using some sort of technology, whether it is a cell phone, a television, or a computer.

In The Machine Stops, Foster used a lot of imagery to allow the reader to picture the machine.  This machine that the characters lived in was some sort of underground contraption that shielded the people of the world.  The protagonist of The Machine Stops, Vashti was so consumed with life in her machine that it physically sickened her when trying to leave it.  She even worshiped the machine manual and was in denial whenever her son, Kuno brought her obsession to her attention.  This relates to the world we live in today.  We consume ourselves with technology, and at the rate that technology is advancing, maybe some day in the future we will be living in underground machines like Vashti.

There is a comparison that can be made between the lives of the characters to life today.  In The Machine Stops, people no longer saw the use in traveling to different places and being on earth.  Like E.M Foster explained, if everywhere is the same, what’s the point of traveling?  I personally feel like in todays day and age, people take what we have for granted.  Not enough people go out and see the hidden wonders of the world.  We use the world as our personal garbage can and end up with problems such as Global Warming.  One day we may just end up having to wear masks to walk around on earth and we may get stuck underground and be “isolated” as the characters of The Machine Stops.

The world that the characters of the short story lived in was not much of a Utopia to me.  It can be considered a Utopia to people like Vashti being that she was born into that world where the sun isn’t needed and the earth isn’t important.  Living in the world we live in today and reading The Machine Stops, I could only hope we don’t end up in a world where we are isolated from others and have to talk to our friends and family through a machine.  (Even though we already do that, for example Oovoo and FaceTime)  We use modern technology to ease our lives, so we should focus today on the wonders that are before us, outside of modern technology and learnt o appreciate whats before us.

This story is interesting and more fun to read than The Day Before The Revolution. The story had a lot of imaginary elements because instead of the characters living on earth they are living in some sort of air ship/space ship. They are surrounded heavily by technology that they do not have to physically do anything but just press a simple button. Anything you can think of doing, their is a button to do it for you. At the beginning of the story I was confused like every other story I read for this class. The story starts off describing a room and its shape, then what is in it. After a few sentences tells us that someone was at the door and when the person Kuno enter i did not know what was going on. I felt like he was physically in the room but he wasn’t. As i read more i notice that Kuno was the son of the lady who the author talks about first being in the room by herself. When the woman open the door for Kuno who i didn’t know that was her son. I thought he was some guy who came to see her. When the woman said hurry up you are wasting my time, i thought Kuno was doing something sexually to her. I don’t know why I came to this conclusion but i tend to analyze every sentence and not wait till the paragraph is done to sum it up. Even though the passage say the woman open the door it seem to be that the woman was speaking to her son through a time machine or something. That part was confusing because how can someone open a door but is not talking to the person who she open the door for in reality but through a machine. Maybe if I read the story over and over I would not misunderstood things such as that. People have different comprehensive skills so some might read a sentence once and understand then some one might have to read it 4 times. At a point in the story the woman seem to have no time for Kuno because he speaks about seeing her and she seem to have no time to see him. On the third page the boy talks about wanting to go to visit earth once again like if he haven’t been there before. After reading that I said to myself well ok, if he want to go to earth again then he does not live on earth. That being said i felt that the boy and his mother lives somewhere on another planet or even in a space ship. The mother talks about men killing animals and other men. This to me look like the mother does not like planet earth. Whoever read this story knows that this room that Vashti (the woman) stays in has nothing but has everything to connect with the world by the machine with all the buttons. Vashti is very concerned about Kuno going to earth because she don’t want him to die.

In “The Machine Stops”, at first you may think it’s based on a utopian society but in reality, it is a dystopia. This is a science fiction based dystopian story which is primarily centered around this thing called The Machine and the main character Vashti. From what I analyzed, it seems Vashti and perhaps others living in this society have become accustomed to this new way of life of machinery. It seems everything they do relies on the works of these machines such as touching a button to call for food, clothing and even music. Vashti also refers to this “Machine” quite often, as if its a living thing or a higher being of some sort. The beginning of the story gives us a brief summary on what has happened to earth and what “rules” the world now, which is the Machine. People who are living in the Machine might seem happy but people like Vashti’s son Kuno, wants to explore the world outside of the Machine or what they call the surface of the earth. What really intrigues me is this line, “You talk as if a god had made the Machine.”(Forster 2) This really shows the despise Kuno feels for the Machine because in a way he blames it for turning his mother into this machine relying person who can’t do anything without the machine and who is ignorant of the outside world. It really saddens me to see how reliant Vashti is on the machine. In her isolated room in the machine, she has a book called the book of the machine which has instructions on how to deal with any future events that may happen or contingencies. It’s so sad it even tells her what buttons to press and all. After reading throughout the middle part of the story, i start to believe the possibility that the Machine may refer to their god. In page five she quotes, “O Machine O Machine! Thrice she kissed it, thrice inclined her head, thrice she felt the delirium of acquiescence. Her ritual performed.” A normal person would not go this far to worship somebody unless they were some kind of higher being. Another line from the story that I found really fascinating was “So the human passions still blundered up and down in the Machine.(Foster 5)” After reading this line multiple signs, it supported my idea on what this society is really like, a dystopia. This line suggests that human passion was unnecessary and is foolish to consider. Blundered up and down, meant that careless mistakes still existed in the machine. This suggests that in the Machine, mistakes are unrealistic and abnormal. I feel that mistakes are what societies need. Mistakes are how people learn and grow, they learn from what they did wrong and try to improve themselves on being better people. In the middle to the end of the story, it displays some irony. Vashti starts to see the flaws of the Machine and realizes the thing she worshiped so much, was only a step back into despair which separates her, from her son.

The  Machine Stops is wonderfully written. While reading this story, I could see some similarities between the lifestyle of the people in the book and our current society. The reliance on machinery is so heavily put forth in the story that it puts things into perspective on how we as a society may slowly be losing touch with one another as people. The story it self, has a scary quality about it. When you read about how Kuno had practiced his muscles to, it only makes you think, how frail are these people at this current point in the story? I imagine after years of living cooped up in the rooms, without having to do much other than pressing buttons, the human being has deteriorated to something that may resemble a sliver of what humanity used to be. Simple day to day activities such as walking from one place to another can greatly influence the general health of a human being, and the people in the story don’t even seem to do that. The story seems to reflect what it would be like if humanity had completely given up it’s rights to free thought and just indulged in the glitz and glamour of technology. Vashti’s love and incredible denial of how the Machine could be wrong, borders on cult like behavior to me. She is incapable of seeing through the veil that has been place in front of her. This to me shows that humanity truly has just bent to the rules and knows no other way to live. I believe the text can be seen as precaution, to allow ourselves the privileges of which machines bring us, but do not allow ourselves to hand over our free will and free thought. We as people should always have a check system, to make sure to continue on wards with human contact to benefit ourselves as a race.

-Rafal Napierala

The story “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster is a very engaging story , right from the beginning it starts making you imagine things in your head, it opens to a whole new world. The Story involves two main characters. A mother and a son , their names were Vashti and Kuno. They live completely opposite from each other. In this world the author created Humans aren’t able to live above the earth’s surface, they live underground. The whole living civilization underground. But thanks to the technology that they have many have been able to live for so long. In this Story, technology starts looking like a good thing , like a great tool that human rely on. The story explains the life Vashti lives, and her lectures and talks she has with other people, but in this world thanks to technology they dnot have to physically see each other in other to talk, now it’s rare when people physically see each other. It’s like instant messaging but they can see each other virtually. I feel like it’s like a virtual thing where you see the person, you hear them, but you can’t literally touch them. And the story says Vashti has a conversation with her Son. But the conversation quickly gets serious when her son has to tell her something. He explains it’s something really serious and that he can’t say it through the way they were communicating. She asked why, if she could see him and hear him, but he didn’t feel it was good enough. She didn’t want to travel. This this underground world , it’s really rare when someone travels, so she really didn’t want to travel. Many have gotten used being in their cells, since it provides them with anything they need. Her son got mad but at the end she ended up going . While she traveled she had so many difficulties and she wasn’t happy about it. When she got to him , she argued to him all she had gone through. But he didn’t care and just explained he was going to die. It was a shocking part for me because of a simple thing he didn’t follow , it was unfair to me!  If people don’t do things the way it is to be, it’s bad , so basically you can’t do things in your own type of way. This then turns into an argument , she doesn’t support in the things her son does,he compared her to the committee, that she reacted the same, what he told her was really shocking to me . “You are beginning to worship the Machine, He said coldly (Forster pg 11).” He was explainging that she was making the Machine as a god. she denied it, but honestly everyone except this kid Kuno is worshiping the Machine. It bothered me a little because people nowadays can’t be without their phones. If I panic when I loose my phone for a minute, imagine the world in a few years. Is this story some how a reflection of how our world might turn out to be.

In E.M Forster’s “The Machine Stops” introduces a utopian type society. I did not see it as your typical utopian society though. With a utopian society you image everyone happy and life is very simple and all is well. In this short story things seem a lot more depressing. I imagine the opening scene as something out of a popular video game series called “Fallout”. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic society where people are trapped in “vaults” and can never step into the outside world due to radiation. When the main character in the game steps out onto the earth for the 1^st time, everything is like a desert with not a lot of plant life to be seen and a lot of destroyed buildings and towns. The color scheme is very bland and not a lot of vibrant colors. That’s how I imagine this world to be like. Now back to the depressing vibe I get from the imagery, when the protagonist Vashti hears the doorbell ring, she says this in response “I suppose I must see who it is” (Forster, 1). I just imagine a letdown person slowly move their chair over the door and kind of emotionlessly answer it. To me this does not seem like a utopian society.

Now throughout the story, this thing named “the Machine” is constantly being referred to. Now at 1^st I thought that the Machine simply referred to Vashti’s house in which everything was mechanized. I soon realized that the Machine actually referred to the whole mechanical system that pretty much ran their entire society. There are also a lot of references that they see the machine as a type of God. The author specifically capitalizes the M in Machine. To me that signify that the machine is almost a person and has a name and not just an object. Vashti gets into an argument with her son Kuno in the story and Kuno says “You are beginning to worship the Machine” (Forster, 11). Vashti then responds with this “I worship nothing! I am most advanced. I don’t think you irreligious, for there is no such thing as religion left. All the fear and the superstition that existed once have been destroyed by the Machine” (Forster, 11). It almost seems like that this society has gotten rid of religion completely and viewed it as an almost taboo subject where everyone doesn’t have a God. However, Kuno believes that his mother is worshipping the machine as a God. I kind of agree with him. Especially when Forster writes “O Machine! She murmured and caressed her Book and was comforted” (Forster, 7). That’s almost the same thing to me as in our world when someone is distressed they yell out “Oh God”. The author not only identifies the Machine with a capitol but the Book as well which I’m assuming is either a manual or a way for the Machine to talk to people. I was not too clear on that.

Extremely well written, a lot of visuals, and it made me think about what has become of society as technology begins to take over our lives. The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, touched on the concept of this so-called Machine being some kind of bigger than life thing where human beings follow the rules of “the book”, and holds some kind of biblical meaning to one of the main characters named Vashti. Her son, Kuno who is against the rules of living by boundaries is a wiser person who has been wanting to escape this “Machine”.

“You are beginning to worship the machine” (Forster 11)

The reason why this story touched me was because of the way the main character Vashti, lives an introverted life and is accustomed to buttons doing all the work in her life. Much like today in real life where now we are so accustomed to technology and devices like tablets, computers, etc. to do all our work. The text even mentions her not walking, but moving in an chair that is mechanical, which I assume is an electrical wheelchair. The humans are described as introverted, separate, and physically weak because the Machine wouldn’t allow strong humans to be produced. Something that I thought of reading the passage was studies that have been conducted on teenage kids and young adults who are under the age of 21 that are more stuck onto a chair daily and are less outdoors. Of course we aren’t bound to rules like the Machine in the text, but it’s an interesting thing that I connect to in life. Her son, Kuno wants her mother to escape the realm of the Machine and come outside of her room and into the open. She refuses, but then she takes the flight to visit Kuno to her home. She realizes that the Machine is a cruel world and that the remains of the Earth still remain during her air-ship flight. During this part they explain homelessness and how any human who would dishonor the Machine’s rules would become homelessness. Which means they would be exposed to air, in any case they would die because of it. As I kept reading, I noticed that the story was becoming less and less about Vashti’s introvertness and more of the evils of the new world she lives in. It’s a bubble of madness where they follow rules, almost a religion, and if anyone is born with anything they’re against with such as physical strength, are killed. The book in which are kept by the humans are something they deeply keep and is something compared to the bible. Each human lives in a hole in the wall surrounded by darkness and buttons that they control to do their daily work. I think this part of the text caught my attention a lot because there’s a message by the end of the text. To me it means not to let technology dominate my life. There’s much more to it and we are not to bound by the advancements of it, no matter how much it may make life easier. It’s always better to explore and enjoy the fresh air a lot more than to be glued to a computer chair or the screen of your phone.

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.

  In E.M Forster’s “The Machine Stops”, introduces a utopia society and honestly I really enjoyed this story a lot, especially as an introduction to a sense of utopia. The story starts off by Forster using descriptive imagery in order for us to gain an understanding of the setting which would be the women’s room. Right away there is a bit of confusion, there were contradictions such as “There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh” (Forster 1) this is just one example but in only in the first paragraph there are many of these throughout the story. To my understanding I would assume that Forster really wanted us to understand that this whole room was “artificial” yet at the same time it has natural amenities such as the natural fresh air. Midway through page one I began to notice how the women or later on known as Vashti, interacts with the room as well as how technology is extremely advanced which gives a sense of science fiction. “You mustn’t say anything against the Machine” (Forster 2) I began to notice how the machine was referenced as if it was someone with power or rule above them and had to be respected. After page two we begin to see a lot of dialogue between Vashti and her son Kuno about him wanting to see his mother physically and how the son wants to visit Earth. Towards the end of page three and beginning of three once again I noticed how all of their life activities were done by interfacing with machines and how they did everything from their rooms without having the need to get up. On page 4 we are introduced to how a day would somewhat be like such as Vashti giving a lecture from her arm chair. I began to notice some characteristics of utopia one I read the following line “for beds were of the same dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in the Machine” this gives us an idea of how there is standardization in beds, rooms and much more. So there is this sense of standardization throughout the society and how the Machine control their lives. One thing which surprised me was to find out that in this society babies are removed to public nurseries and only visited by their parents at the center, yet the Machine assigns living arrangements to all the people this once again showing how the Machine is controlling this society.      

           In part two of this story titled “The Mending Apparatus” Vashti went to visit her son in person, something which was not done before the Machine basically took over. On page ten we learn that Kuno had been threatened with Homelessness which mean death by the victim being exposed to the air. At which point Kuno begins to explain how he has already escaped and been to the surface. “You are beginning to worship the Machine” (Forster 11) once again describes how this machine is worshiped and basically rules over the people. I did notice that Forster used comparison and a little of complexity when trying to get a very important detail to the reader such as on the end of page 11, where Kuno starts to redefine near & far without a reference to a machine giving a sense of individuality but there is always some fear and taught about what the machine would do. Once again imagery was used again to describe Kuno’s experience on the surface, this helped to see everything through his eyes and experience every detail. By this point we see how Kuno has liberated himself from the utopian society in which we see how technology may control this huge portion of our lives, yet we will always have free will to either use it or not. This story in general relates a lot our daily lives now, since almost everything can be done online or mobile phones.