The Short Blog

The “Machine Stops” by E. M. Forester is similar to what is currently happening during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this story, the disease is replaced by toxic gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. Throughout the story, characters remain in their own machine isolated from each. This is similar to social distancing. Instead of staying in a machine, we just remain in our own houses and are not supposed to go to someone else’s house. In the story, people are able to contact each other, and they use a technology which seems like video chatting software. This closely resembles what we use to communicate: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Facetime etc. Another parallel is the reason they remain in the machines and are not able to go to the surface of the Earth because there is supposedly toxic air. What reminded me even more about the difficulties of not going outside is how Kuno, a younger individual, wanted to go outside and had a harder time keeping himself inside, while an older person, Vashti, and is ...

If I were to rename one of our short stories, I would change “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler to “Silent Communication.” Throughout her story, Butler focuses on the non-verbal interactions between characters and their effects. In the opening scene two men are pretending to fight on the bus, but due to an accident, one man accidently strikes the other and they break out into a real fight. In this scene, if the two were able to talk, they could have immediately apologized to prevent the fight from escalating. However their inability to talk is what initiated action. In this scene, Speech Sounds does not seem relevant. The action between the two men is not about speech, but the lack of speech. Later in the story, when Rye meets Obsidian, they are able to communicate to each other with the various items they are holding to express their names. They are able to go from being complete strangers to becoming familiar with each other without talking at all. This part of the story has an empha...