Escaping the machine world

E.M. Forster’s ‘The Machine Stops’ is a story that was published as a reaction to H.G. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’. He wrote it as a way to somewhat predict the future. Kuno has more of an explorer type of personality, who enjoys visiting places and gets all of his ideas through exploring. Whereas his mom is the opposite, she likes to stay inside, and she doesn’t get any ideas outside of her home. Kuno is also more of a type of person who wants to do things that others are scared to do. He is a very curious and fearless person. The Machine would feed them, clothes them and houses them. They speak to other people and see one another through it. Kuno didn’t like the machine, but others would think otherwise about it because, “they described the strange feeling of peace that came over them when they handled the Book of the Machine, the pleasure that it was to repeat certain numeral out of it.” (Page 22). This picture portrays Kuno going out onto the surface after being stuck in his house at all times and not going out as much as Kuno does so, in my poster, the propaganda techniques that I have used are testimonial, plain folks, and bandwagon. Testimonial is portrayed by Kuno walking out alone and onto the surface of the earth. Plain folk was more of an inspiration to make it like this because Kuno was trying to convince his mother to go and visit him on the surface of the earth. Bandwagon was used by showing that Kuno walking away from all of the technology and moving to the surface of the earth is survivable and is a really good thing to do.

Synthesis Composition

The Machine Stops was written by E.M. Forster as a reaction to The Time Machine written by H.G. Wells. The way Forster writes this book is also a way for him to show what he thinks will happen in the future. The literature in the story is relevant in today’s society by the fact that people in today’s world is creating more and more technology to make life easier. Because of that, sooner and sooner the world will become like that since, “all unrest [will be] concentrated in the soul.” (Page 7). Everyone’s movements will be internal therefore meaning that they will not need to do much due to the fact that technology is becoming more advanced by the day which will result in technology to become personal machines that do things for people. In the story, the dystopian characteristics that would fit into today’s society are that people are becoming slaves to the devices that are around which will lead to people “…[worshiping] the machine.” (Page 12). Yes, the story is fiction, but its Forster’s prediction of what could possibly happen. Now because of all of the technology that there is around, in a few years or decades, the world will become just like the story. It’ll result in everyone only listening to what one person says (the ‘leader’) and what they would display online. No one would be able to distinguish whether the media displayed out is fake or real, “even educated people are increasingly … unwilling to distinguish between fake and real information.” (Stephen Marche). Nobody will want to figure what’s real and what isn’t because they just believe one person who is torturing everyone. Another story that relates to The Machine Stops would be Wall-E, a movie created by Andrew Stanton. Wall-E portrays a way that humans could become. Glued to their screens and on a spaceship out in space because earth became too polluted to live on due to the fact that the people don’t care anymore about taking care of the plant. They try to find a way to go back to earth by sending a robot. Eventually, when the robot finds a plant that resembles a sign that they could return, the other robots turn against that one robot. In The Machine Stops, Kuno would like for the world to go back to how it was before. In Wall-E, the character Wall-E is just a machine who collects garbage and cleans up, but he then finds a robot from the spaceship who is trying to find a sign about living on earth and soon, they find a plant which resembles life on earth and so Wall-E and the robot bring the plant back which makes the captain very happy. Unfortunately, the robots that are taking care of the ship, turn against the captain and don’t want to return. Which then concludes that Kuno, Wall-E, the robot, and the captain all want earth back and for it to be safe and live happily on the surface.