This short story by E.M. Forster was very interesting to read. While reading it I couldn’t help but realize a few connections with a few films and life in today’s world. Written in 1909 this story was probably set in a futuristic world where humans have become completely dependent on machines. While reading the conversation between Vashti and Kuno I found it amusing that the older generation was siding with the technology while the younger generation was going against the Machine. I wondered that as our generation grew older maybe we could possibly be placed in that situation, where our children who grew with technology start to resent it. 

  After the conversation with Vashti and Kuno, Forster begins to describe the honey celled room that belonged to Vashti and how everything was there for her use. I began to compare it with the Film Wall-E, the Pixar film that was created in 2008, the way the humans counted on the machines to do everything for them was very similar, when they need food it was given to them all in the push of a button. In both pieces they forgot how to do things for themselves. For example, in page 7, when Vashti was going to visit her son she goes on the Air-ship a man drops his book, normally they would be in their rooms and the machine would simply pick up the book for them. I don’t think the man knew he could simply bend down and pick it up for himself instead he just left it there. Which dumbfounded Vashti, not because he didn’t pick it up but because it could easily happen to her and she held on to that book for protection as a catholic would hold on to a bible. 

  The lack of human contact helped me understand why the humans in this story were very protective of the machine. Since birth the machine was all it had, babies normally look for some type of a mother figure it’s in out nature. Could it be possible that as infants they began to view the Machine as that? A mother figure that would be able to give them the protection and comfort that they as humans looked for. The committee was in control of life, they decided how many births were allows and how many deaths were to be given, humans needed permission for everything. They would request the permission to father or mother a child but since birth the child would be taken to their own room and would be cared for by the machines and the cycle begins again. I questioned why humans would request permission if they had no physical contact with the baby throughout it’s life, they don’t take care of it. Technically with the machine the baby doesn’t need it’s parents. I returned to the idea of human nature, where a baby needs to be given comfort maybe adults have the need to give it, one way or another. We are dependent creatures, in “The Machine Stops” humans just depended on the wrong thing.

In “The Machine Stops” by E.M Foster, we can find a lot of similarities to our today’s life.  This story was great to read, way easier to understand than the stories before. From the beginning, author clearly explains setting of the story. He makes sure to give a lot of clear details, to make it easier for us to imagine, like this one: “hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee”(pg1).

This text was first published in November 1909, which is unbelievable for me to imagine, since over a hundred years, and we can find so many similarities to our today’s world. When I was ten, which was fifteen years ago, it was rare that people had computers at their home, and now, in developed countries, it is not any more unique that most of people use them on daily basis. Technology evolved to the point where everyone uses it to “live”. In my opinion it is great thing, because it makes our life easier in many ways, but there are negative aspects of it too. Author wrote about a Vashti and son of her Kuno. He was trying to communicate with her, but the main idea was that he wanted to meet with her, in four eyes. She was afraid of leaving a place where she lived, and she was controlled by the Machine, and Vashti’s life was ruled by it.

Overall this story is kind of scary, because I know that most of us can’t leave home without our cell phone. Technology is taking over our life’s, and what comes with it, is that we lose person to person interactions. which in my opinion leads to the name of this story “The Machine Stops”. It indicates that the Machine literally stops communication between one another.               

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.