This is my propaganda poster of The Machine Stops book by E. M. Forester and I used Pixlr to create this.

Be with the machine!

The Machine Stops by E. M. Forester is a story about a dystopian future where everyone lives and stays inside Machines. The plot proceeds with two different points of view on the life inside the machines, one of them being Vashti, she likes the machines, even worships it because it takes care of her and does all her daily needs for her, she does not need to leave the machine because there is nothing outside the machine that she would need to experience, and Kuno, which wants to explore the world and experience new things, rather than stay inside the providing machine. My propaganda poster praises the care and provision that the machine offers, using powerful words such as ultimate and benefactor, making this the first propaganda technique, virtue words. The machine has done so much for people, why would they want to get away from the machine, what would happen if someone tried to abandon the lifestyle and mindset of the machine, this would be the second propaganda technique, fear. For people that have not experienced the lifestyle of the machine yet, for whatever reason, should know that they will be taken care of in every way imaginable, this is the last propaganda technique, bandwagon. In conclusion, my propaganda poster is trying to convince that people should want to be with the machines because they will take care of them in any way they want, without doing any work at all, just the push of a button and anything can be done. 

Synthesis Composition of The Machine Stops and WALL-E

The Machine Stops is a dystopia written by E. M. Forester where every person is assigned to a machine which will do every personal need for them, and there are two important characters that have very different thoughts about the machine, one of them is Vashti and she thinks that the way of the machine is the only way of life and has been brainwashed into thinking that way, Kuno is the other character which has a completely opposite way of thinking, he wants to explore the world and learn new things rather than staying inside the machine. Wall-E is a movie produced by Andrew Stanton where the world is a desolate place with towers made of garbage and is completely abandoned other than a small robot that is left to clean up the world while humanity is basking in a massive spacecraft filled with many amenities and automated systems. The Machine Stops and WALL-E were supposed to be satirical predictions of what earth would be like in the future, and they were not far off, the world is now enslaved by technology, and it is always with people no matter where they go, they are always being watched and monitored. People have become lazy because of how automated everything has become and do not have the same motivation as their predecessors. 

 The Machine Stops is still relevant today because society is becoming more like it as every day passes, every advancement and automation is just making people softer and lazier, in the article “Surviving Toxic Technology” by Douglas Todd, it states that teenagers who consume more media and chemically based foods are slowly becoming embedded into a “non-real world”, this is something shown in The Machine Stops except it applies to all humans that live on the earth, people have all been brainwashed by The Machine into staying by the machine and living in it. The Machine Stops is considered satirical because the people have been completely brainwashed to the point where they cannot even form ideas, a sentence which Vashti says, “These mountains give me no ideas,” is something that is so absurd that it is considered satirical.  

 WALL-E is like the machine stops in the way that the earth is abandoned, and they have relied on technology to care for them and clean up the mess. The ending of WALL-E is much more hopeful than the ending in The Machine Stops because in WALL-E there is a hopeful, happy conclusion, the people come back to earth and start creating a new civilization. In The Machine Stops, everyone dies at the end after “the whole city was broken like a honeycomb,” a very terrible quote from The Machine Stops. The whole city was destroyed, and all the people died. Kuno predicted that this tragedy was going to happen and tried to warn Vashti, but it was too late, by the time they were reunited their time was already up.  

 In conclusion, both WALL-E and The Machine Stops are remarkably similar and relate to modern society in many ways. People are slowly becoming physically connected with technology, they have phones, Bluetooth headphones, apple watches and more. Every day society becomes closer to these dystopian stories, people need to realize that they are losing their grasp of reality and when people realize that there is a significant issue, it will be too late. 

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