“The Machine stops”  was written by E.M. Forster. The author portrays  a world into the future, by showing people’s lives existing in the interior of the earth .The impetus for the migration is the destruction of the surface of the earth. There are two main characters in the story, Vashti, the mother, and her son Kuno. The story begins with a description of a small room, where lives Vashti, who spend most her time in armchair.  In the beginning of the story we see conversation between the mother and  her son through the telephone. Huno tried to explain his mother  that he wants to see her in person not from the plate, which is the standard communication method. “The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this place, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through telephone, but I do not hear you”(page2). However, the mother is irritable by his request and does not  understand his son. She does not see any necessity to see each other  face to face. Technology has such an overwhelmingly predominate position in her life that even the relationship with her son became less important to her. “I have called you before, mother, but you were aways busy or isoleted”.The author utilizes many dialogs in his writings which enable him to emphasize the differenses between son and his mother.

Kuno portrays a rebel against a social life made everyone  dependence  only with technological world. “We create the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrow down love to carnal act, it has paralysed our body and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. Machine develops-but not on our lines”(page 15). Currently, everyone use to many different means of technology that it starts controlled out life. Our vision is impossible without such a things as phones, internet, computers. The author shows in his story the downside of technilogical advance .The technilogical development is conducive to reducing human contact and isolating people from each other.

Reading “The Machine Stops” really made me realize how dependent our society is on technology. The first paragraph pulled me in with all the imagery that is going on. At first I was very confused on what was going on and what time period they were in but after the first few pages I figured it out. Vashti, who is the mother of Kuno, lives in a room by herself with a chair and a small desk. When the chair was described it made me think of a mechanical wheel chair of some kind. I assumed she was handicap until I read more. Everyone has these mechanical chairs as well as a book that they don’t go anywhere without. I was unsure if Vashti was traveling on a boat or on a plane. She said “they were crossing a golden sea”. She spoke about the sunlight coming into her window on her trip to seeing Kuno but the way the trip was described did not seem like it was on a plane. Maybe it wasn’t a plane or a boat? Maybe it was something from the future since everything else they described was from the future.

Throughout this entire story they talk about this book that pretty much controls their lives. From birth, this book tells them exactly what to do. Mother and children are separated at birth and can only connect through this machine. She spoke to her son through there and i believe she saw him through the machine as well. Anything she wanted to do, she had to press a button on this machine. Her room only had the chair she sat in and a desk but some how if she pressed a button something weird happened. Whenever she wanted to go to sleep, she pressed the button and she was sleeping, same thing for anything else she wanted to do which was weird to me. I am not completely sure if i understand how it happened but she made it seem like everyones life revolves around these machines and this book. Anything they needed to know, they asked this book and the book told them what to do.

In more ways than one, this machine/book compares to our society today. Many people rely on technology at all times. More and more resources are showing up online. It is exactly like what the story is about. Mostly everyone in this world has a cell phone and a computer, if not they have access to a computer. Why? Because everything is done through technology these days. School assignments, books, movies, documents, and many more things are all online. I feel that technology is getting out of hand. It is kind of how Kuno is feeling. He wants to rebel and find his own way above ground and his mother tells him to get permission first. Why should Kuno have to get permission to go somewhere? He wants to live his life and experience things on his own without technology, without permission from the book or anyone else. He wants to breath air and see what its like to be above ground. I agree with Kuno and don’t see why he has to listen to all of these rules. Today, many people, even children, are addicted to their computers, tablets or cell phones. It is not a way to live. What happened to playing outside, writing things down on paper, and doings things without technology? Over the next few years, technology is going to take over more than it already has. I don’t blame Kuno for wanting to find things out on his own. This is life. We are entitled to do what we want to do. Of course there are some rules we need to follow but in the story they cannot do anything. It is unfair. Technology is taking over and I hope that in the future things will not be the way this story is explained. I enjoyed this story but I was very confused. After I read everything I figured it out but this story was a little difficult for me.

This is my first experience reading about a dystopia and I must I say wow! It goes against human nature and everything it means to be a human! “The Machine Stops” was the name of the story we read this week. I say that dystopia goes against human nature because they shun at human to human contact! As human beings we are social animals, we love to be connected, to be in social groups, to touch to feel, to have emotions, and these concepts seem so foreign and so disgusting to them. “When Vashti swerved away from the sunbeams with a cry……. – she put out her hand to steady her. How dare you! exclaimed the passenger.  You forget yourself…….. People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete…” ( Forester 8-9) The fact that the passenger, to me, sounded so disgusted because attendant touched her! Never mind she had to touch her to keep Vashti from falling! They rather let someone fall on the ground and possibly her themselves then to touch them, to me I find that incomprehensible! In this particular story, we see the protagonist Vashti, so depended on the machine. We soon find out that everyone in the world is depended on this machine, no one is self sufficient. As Human beings we are intellectual creatures, we crave knowledge, we like to explore the unknown, to make the impossible possible, in this story all of this disappears and everyone is solely depended on this machine. ” The man in front dropped his book……. if the book was dropped, the floor raised it mechanically……. They stopped- the thing was unforeseen – and the man, instead of picking up his property, felt the muscles of his arm to see how they failed him” ( Forster 7). They are so depended on this machine they can’t even do a single task like picking a book up off the floor. The simple act of a book dropping leaves them dumb founded. The fact that this man is in a public place and no one knows what to do, no one knows how to pick up a book, I find astonishing. Kuno, who is Vashti son and who I believe is the antagonist, he’s the only person we come in contact with in this story he knows this isn’t the way they should be living life. My favorite quote in this store comes from Kuno on page 15 he say “We created the machine, to do out will, but we cannot make it do our wills. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed love to a carnal act”. This quote sums up the entire story for me. The built this machine to make their lives easier but now they have become so depended on this machine, the machine has all the power and they are just mindless souls, and the only act they have on their own is breathing! They aren’t even allowed to have kids without permission. They can’t even choose to live where they want. Everything is controlled by this machine! The machine has absolute control, and because Kuno dares to think for himself, dares to explore the outside world, dares to go against the status quo, he’s threatened with homelessness. People like Kuno threaten the machine and he must be kept under control and if he can’t be then he must destroyed. I like his character because he goes against grain. He sees the machine for what it is and he doesn’t like it!

The concept for this story is very modern and similar to the things we’ve seen in movies that have or are soon to come out in theaters. The story captured me within the the first two pages. The author begins with painting a setting for the protagonist Vashti. The way this author did this was very interesting and felt very futuristic. Stuck with the theme/feel of the story very well. Continuing the story I felt more involved in this civilization and can picture the world perfectly, giving it color and characters along the way. We then become familiar with the “machine”, which is basically where they live. Everything revolves around this machine, it is their way of life. The machine provides the people with everything from the air they breathe to the lectures and materials they learn from. This machines is looked as a godly figure because of this, many examples of praise and ignorance to other possibilities of the “salvation” of this society against the “outer-world” as they called it. This machine was made by man but has now taken over every aspect of this civilization. The “outer-world” aka earth was now inhabitable and any new being was created inside this machine including children. It is explained that children are raised by their parents to a certain age and then are given their own rooms to live in. We then are introduced to Vashti’s son Kuno. Kuno I feel is a really important character more so then his mother. Through Kuno we find out what happened to earth and more on it’s current state. In conversation with his mother Kuno describes his own journey to earth through the darkness of this machine. Through this darkness he gets in touch with his true self and becomes human again. He finally feels pain, sees things on his own, and builds up physical and mental strength. At this point his character seems more realistic and easier for us to relate to, his story kick starts the utopia into a downward spiral and the machine is straying away from its “greatness”. It was upsetting that Vashti did not want to accept the fact that this machine was running their lives, and when Kuno was explaining his journey to her she was concentrated in how much of a disappointment he was. The machine slowly began to have problems, the people began to complain but it made no difference because the machine chose which complains were worth passing through to the “Central Committee”. Another very frustrating factor in this story. I then realized there was no escape from this machine. The people were so used to being fed false information and pressing a few buttons when they felt discomfort. They knew nothing of the real world or the world before theirs. They would not know how to survive outside of this machine. Realizing this, the story takes a turn for the worse. The machine breaks down completely and the people are exposed to a completely new atmosphere. They would scramble in terror and asked for euthanasia to get away from the pain but the machine would not respond. The only person that had experience on earth was Kuno and we later find out that the homeless which we were people the machine had expelled for disobedience and other punishments had made there own society outside the machine. This was their only hope to continue life.