Dehumanization In The Machine Stops

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Technology causes the dehumanization of society when it is used to control people, which takes away the innate human sense to search for the truth and freedom, thus preventing people from realizing oppression and rebelling against it. The dehumanization done by the Machine enables it control and eventually bring the death of humanity by keeping the people weak and ignorant to their emotions. Technology in “The Machine Stops” makes people overly dependent on it, which causes them to blindly worship and become enslaved to it. While people in the Machine world generally regard the Machine as a necessary component in their lives, in the beginning of the story, they do not consider it to be god-like. The Machine world is described as having rooms that are “hexagonal in shape, like … cell[s] of … bee[s],” which makes a direct comparison to the honeybee lifestyle (Forster). Bees are altruistic creatures, which means that they give up their lives for the benefit of the entire colony and the queen bee. Similarly, the people in the Machine world are deprived of “consciousness and [are kept] … forever weak and childish” (Dunn, Erlich 47). Like bees, these people are kept loyal to their leader by “losing” conscious thought and becoming entirely dependent on the mother figure. The Machine is like the queen bee, for which all the worker bees or people owe their lives to. The Machine is able to control the people and be worshipped as a god and brings humans into an evolutionary standstill. It is because of the Machine dehumanizing people that also prevents humans from adapting to new situations, which causes their eventual extinction. The society in “The Machine Stops” is one of isolation and one that discourages direct interactions between pe... ... middle of paper ... ...t he has while being strapped in a chair inside of a power station cooling tower (Brazil). Sam has become crazy and is now unaffected by the System, which cannot access his mind. Salman Rushdie, a famous literary critic, explains that the retreat into one’s own imagination is the only way “[totalitarian] reality can be smashed so it may subsequently be reconstructed” (Rushdie 122). While the System can try to make people conform by telling them how to act on the outside, they cannot penetrate the inside mind. This is a stark contrast to the Party in 1984, where O’Brien is able to penetrate Winston’s mind using fear and alter his inside thoughts and fantasies. Unlike “The Machine Stops” and 1984, the inherent failures in the System account for the abilities of people to take advantage of technology as a form of escapism from the bureaucratic structure.

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