Morgan Forster's Short Story 'The Machine Stops'

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Today, we live in a world filled with technology. Technology does things for us, they make our life easier. Therefore, we continue to find ways to produce more advanced technologies, so then we don’t have to do things ourselves. In the short story, “The Machine Stops” by Edward Morgan Forster, people live underground with extreme technological advances and everything is controlled by technology. There were control for when they want music, clothing, food, even to communicate with others. People have been completely dependent on machines. Forster is warning the future generations. In the story, he shows how technology will destroy the communication amongst people, and how it will ultimately be the end of us. In “The …show more content…

Kuno then tells his mother “You are beginning to worship the Machine.” (Forster, pg.) But Vashti denies it. I agree with Kuno, because Vashti is a machine relying person, that is ignorant to surviving without machines. In the story, the people during this time were given a book by the machines that tells them what they can and cannot do. I think that Forster is connecting this to our society. Like a Bible, that tells us good and bad things, and that we will be punished if sinned. Because in the story, Vashti worships the book like it’s a Bible and does not dare to defy it. In the text it states, "feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine." (Forster, pg.) The people in the story spoke of the Machine as if it were a God. That it has provide them with everything they need, therefore they do not need to care about anything …show more content…

It states, "The Machine stops. What do you say? The Machine is stopping, I know it, I know the signs. She burst into a peal of laughter. He heard her and was angry, and they spoke no more.” (Forster, pg.) But instead of being worried, she laughs in return and disregards his warning. But then she started to see signs with the malfunction in the music, rotten food, and weird sounds in the walls. Soon, things continued to worsen, and the communication system stops functioning. The people do not know how to fix it. “People were crawling about, people were screaming, whimpering, gasping for breath, touching each other, vanishing in the dark, and ever and anon being pushed off the platform on to the live rail.” (Forster, pg.) They go crazy like it’s the end of the world because they could not do anything to fix the machines. They spend their whole lives depending on these machines, that without it they cannot live. A message that Forster wants to convey to the readers is that if we continue to abuse the use of technology then it could be a great problem for humanity in the

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