‘The Machine Stops!’ by E.M. Forster was first published in 1947. The short story depicts the contention for freedom within a totalitarian and technological society known as ‘the Machine’ (110). Analysis will focus on ‘The Machine Stops!’ and a representation of disability within the genre of Science Fiction. From the analysis we will appreciate an illegitimate representation of disability within Science Fiction that reflects a representation of disability in contemporary society. Utilising the author’s pessimistic treatment upon the relationship between society and technology will reveal the social status of the protagonist as an inversion of a contemporary representation of disability. We will focus on the non-conformist behaviour of the protagonist, Kuno, and his relationship with his mother that reveals him to be diametrically opposed to his totalitarian milieu. The behaviour of Kuno is represented as a departure from the centralised control of the Machine towards the social margins of society. We will discover that the departure of the protagonist from his home is analogous with a contemporary representation of disability existing at the margins of society. This enables a questioning about the reliability of the term disability and subsequently establishes a problem with semantics. The problem results in understanding the definition of disability as an unstable and transient term. Moreover, observing the dismantling of the natural environment in ‘The Machine Stops!’ reveals an oppressive social structure that manifests in the form of domination and is represented by the destruction and distortion of relations between humanity, nature and technology. Therefore, without the regulation of The Machine we can view the representation of disability as neglecting the senses of man that affect his functional quality of awareness. Submission of individuals to a totalitarian and dystopian society, at the expense of sacrificing inherent human qualities, presents a representation of society that is outmoded, limited, and dysfunctional. In exploring these themes we will take into consideration the work of Lennard J Davis, Enforcing Normalcy, Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women and Judith butler, Performative Acts of Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.
Paralleling Enforcing Normalcy by Lennard J. Davis with a representation of disability in The Machine Stops conceives a holistic sense. In relating to the marginalisation of Kuno we can view how Davis highlights the mental and physical spectrum of human representation and admonishes the meaning of the term, ‘disabled’ (xii). to be, ‘antiquated’ (xii). He says, ‘The term “differently abled” has been recently used, but strictly needs to be applied to everyone, since all people, not just those who are paraplegic or autistic, are differently abled. (One person is a better artist; another is better at sports.) ’ (xii). Davis continues by proposing hypocritical discrimination with the signified meaning of disability. He says, ‘...our goal should be to help “normal” people to see the quotation marks around their assumed state.’ (12). An outmoded signified meaning poses a problem as a limited method in representing disability within a society. This inability to deal with a diverse representation of man can be observed when applied to the social status of Kuno and Vashti.
To establish an inversion of disability in ‘The Machine Stops!’ we find the term differently-abled prominent in recognising a functional model of society. The dichotomy in social status between Vashti and Kuno demonstrates an inversion with a representation of contemporary disability. We are able to observe the assumed normal state of Vashti as functional and Kuno as socially inept and marginalised.
Firstly, Kuno is represented with divergent physical and mental abilities that parallel Davis’s contemporary understanding of the term disabled. Society appropriates the nominal physical ability of Kuno by him describing his own behaviour as extreme, ‘Day after day I went through ridiculous movements’ (127). Also, “‘…I have been out of my feet’…For Kuno possessed a certain physical strength.’” (123). The language of Kuno omits a descriptive term for walking and its vagueness emphasises the protagonist as infirm. We can reveal a representation of Kuno that is limited and exclusive, ‘By these days it was a demerit to be muscular.’ (124). The physical denomination of the individual is pushed to the optimal margins of society with threats of ‘homelessness.’ (Forster 123). Society displays the characteristics of enforced eugenics, ‘…death. The victim is exposed to the air, which kills him.’ (123). The assumed normal majority of Vashti further distinguishes the social status of Kuno, ‘People were almost exactly the same all over the world…’ (120). In accordance with the theme of liberation we must note the narrative technique. The author uses a semi-omniscient narrator that amplifies the position of an ostracised protagonist who is becoming conscious to the reality of the assumed normal majority. The narrative technique is able to construct a uniform with a fearful population and also avoids undermining the paucity of awareness from the civilian with their naïve submission to an oppressive regime.
Davis refers to work of Fine and Asch who explore how a particular model of society can determine the representation of an individual within that specific society, ‘The crucial point is that a disabled person, as conceived by the nondisabled world, has no abilities or social functions [and]… those who do perform successfully are no longer viewed as disabled.’ (10). We can detect a representation of suppression that is negotiated through the influential process of social function. When Vashti has, ‘…a feeling for a small bed.’ (114). we are able to observe control over her decision-making, ‘Complaint was useless, for beds were the same dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in the machine.’ (114). The internal representation of Vashti allows us to examine an affect of covert social influence and for it to be revealed in terms of functionality. In contrast to the ostracism of Kuno we can observe Vashti to be represented as living a functional life from a, ‘small room’, (109). described as, ‘...like the cell of a bee.’ (109). In addition, Vashti displays little demand for physical motion, ‘The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world’ (113). and ‘An arm-chair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the arm-chair sits a swaddled lump of flesh.’ (109). Although Vashti displays the physical traits of contemporary disability cited by Davis, we are however, able to understand how the inversion of the narrative represents her to be living amongst a functional and assumed normal state and how Kuno is ascribed a marginal social identity and is determined as disabled. Ironically, Vashti is described within her room as, ‘swaddled’, (113). and chrysalis-like. The room also composes part of a ‘honeycomb’ (146) structure that replicates the functional order of homes throughout society. The mechanised supervision of the Machine is latent with imagery of a substitute parent that restricts and disables physical development between the stages of infancy and physical maturity. This imagery denotes Vashti as a stabilised infant within the womb that initiates the juxtaposition with a room of office. The imposition of a technological overseer symbolises a macrocosm of society that is more congruent with the genus of the insect that rejects the natural process of individual development by successfully impeding the growth of its progeny.
When contrasting the physical difficulties and developments endured by Kuno we are able to understand how the dependence of Vashti develops physical incapacity that encourages isolation. We can witness the use of a, ‘novum’, (Roberts 19). that reveals the enforcing quality of a regulated and assisting technology, ‘The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery, and it rolled her to the other side of the room, where the bell still rang importunately’ (Forster 109). In the same passage of text we can observe that Vashti is also annoyed at receiving a visit without the regulation of technology. The physical dependence on technology within the room conditions the mind of the functional citizen into maintaining a social equilibrium that is coalescent with the Machines authority. Submission to the Machine creates a social majority that would be represented as disabled within contemporary society. However, within ‘The Machine Stops!’ we are able to observe that the assumed normal majority is represented as functional and abled. The inversion of disability between the novel and contemporary society reveals the term disability as a transient and unstable means of representation that is ineffective in encompassing the holistic model of cited by Davis.
Judith Butler accommodates an understanding of the physically limited patterns imposed upon Vashti and how this imposition can affect cognition. In explaining her view of the, ‘…reified status of gender…’ (520). Butler says, ‘…what is called gender identity is a performative accomplishment by social sanctions and taboo…it is instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.’ (520). Butler’s viewpoint gives insight to the behaviour of Vashti that can figure as a performance of consciousness that is guided by the ideal of the Machine and maintained through replication to direct the cohesive force of society. She confronts an element of control that the Machine has upon her behaviour at the exit from her room and the emotion of fear stirs her, ‘She was frightened of the tunnel: she had not seen it since her last child was born.’ To maintain a society fashioned in the image of the Machine we can understand control is enforced through fear. A limitation upon Vashti’s decision making is used to ascertain the objective of her performance. Her actions are supervised to oppose a contemporary representation of the family structure, toward the ideal, ‘…that the machine may progress eternally.’ (Forster 125).
We can locate a representation of disability with the Machine’s disruption to the relationship of mother and son that is resolved at the destruction of the Machine, ‘…the whole city broke like a honeycomb… For a moment they saw the nations of the dead.’ (146). This prompts Vashti into displaying emotion toward her son for the first time, “‘Where are you?’ she sobbed.” (145). In contrast, we observe the modus operandi of the Machine affecting the maternal capacity of Vashti, “‘Parents, duties of…cease at the moment of birth.’” (116). In contemplation of her meeting Vashti exhibits behaviour that appears devoid of emotion and physical contact. Her functional status within society disables the ability to comprehend a moment of physical reality and her ability to bond, ‘And if Kuno himself, flesh of flesh, stood what profit was there in that? She was too well-bred to shake him by the hand.’ (123). When meeting Kuno face to face the influence of the Machine disrupts a reunification with her son. Vashti opposes the nurturing instinct of the mother and her revolt towards the reunion manifests in an array of idiom, the affect the meeting has upon her ‘soul’, her use of ‘time’, exposure to the nature of the ‘sun’ and the physical interaction with, ‘…the rudest people.’ (123).
In her mythic description of the cyborg Donna Haraway reveals how the environment of the Machine limits the needs of the individual to ensure civilian abandonment of relations with the order of a natural environment. She cites an explanation of how the conscious mind may perceive freedom, ‘Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility.’ (149). In comparison to Judith butler, this passage emphasises the concept of freedom for both Vashti and Kuno. For Vashti, freedom is represented as a performance of consciousness that is constructed within the social parameters of the Machine’s assumed normal majority. This determines Vashti’s perception of freedom because society creates boundaries for the consciousness and limits imagination. When paying attention to the response of Vashti to Kuno’s question, we understand that he needs to repeat to his mother, ‘I found a way out on my own.’ (124). The narrator explains, ‘The phrase conveyed no meaning to her.’ (124). For Vashti, the possibility of an alternative reality without the Machine exists as a symbol of fear, marginalisation and death. The threat disables her conception of existing beyond the limitations of the Machine. However, we can accommodate her behaviour as representing her in terms of functionality operating as an apparent freedom. The stylised actions of Vashti are limited to those actions institutionalised within a reality that are subconsciously orchestrated by the environmental factors of the Machine. Kuno’s revelation of experience and freedom outside the society of the Machine allows a contrast to the absence of emotion displayed by Vashti. Kuno distinguishes himself from the intelligentsia of his mother’s peers ‘passionately’ (131). He says, ‘Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the machine to do our will but we cannot make it do our will now.’ (131). Resisting Novels by Lennard J. Davis cites an understanding of the intelligentsia of society and we can observe this represented in Vashti and the social grouping of lecturers. The interdependent status of lecturers represents disability by their improbable opposition of challenging the Machine’s governance of society. Dependent upon social roles we can understand the categorisation of an intelligentsia as those who find difficulties in disregarding a class system of society, ‘they are the least likely candidates to rise above the prejudices of ideology, but would logically represent their own interests.’ (38). We can observe the incremental development of social constraints and oppression issued from the ‘Central Committee’, (Forster 137). Society’s gradual acceptance is explained, ‘Year by year it was served by increased efficiency and decreased intelligence.’ (Forster 138). This would suggest that Vashti remains a highly functional component of society. However, her role is bound to regulations of a rigid societal structure that does not accommodate for a social transcendence of humanity and serves to decrease social intelligence relative to the quantity of laws imposed upon civilians.
We can locate a representation of disability from civilians by the redundancy of self-assertion. The suppression of emotive behaviour impedes the civilian’s ability to escape from imminent danger. When in need of vacating their underground quarters we can witness the chaos displayed by the assumed normal majority who are lacking the experience needed to confront the situation and assert decision making, ‘Others were yelling for Euthanasia or for respirators, or blaspheming the Machine. Others stood at the doors of their cells fearing, like herself, either to stop in them or to leave them.’ (144). A shift in reality occurs and the social performance of society is displaced and limited. The centralised adherences of society, the refined individuals such as Vashti, are unable to function without the agency of the Machine. The relationship between an assumed normal majority and the Machine’s artificial environment is destroyed and the representation of society is inverted and aligned with the limiting model of the contemporary representation of disability cited by Davis. Destruction of the Machine allows us to deduce the inability of rational thinking brought about by fear and disability is represented with society unable to survive independently and confront the nature of this experience.
Haraway expresses the role of the cyborg and its position in a world, ‘Any object or persons can be reasonably thought of in terms of disassembly and reassembly; no “natural” architectures constrain system design.’ (162). The architecture of nature and man are there for the possible integration with technology that produces the role of the cyborg. It is interesting to note that in order, ‘…that the Machine may progress…’ (Forster 125). and maintain the status quo of regulated human behaviour we can observe a physical transmutation is displayed by an unknown ‘creature’ (133). Kuno is captured and the creature returns him to his quarters, ‘The worms had vanished, I was surrounded by artificial air.’ (133). We can again observe a distortion to the natural biological order of the planet that parallels the analogy of the insect impeding the growth of its progeny. In overpowering the rebellion of Kuno, the actions of the worm represents the existence of the animal kingdom and its fusion with artificial intelligence. This represents a distortion to the power structure of human and animal in preference of the Machine’s dominance over human behaviour.
Haraway distinguishes the ambiguous boundaries between organisms and technology and comprehends possible realities between the human and technology that helps to draw a distinction between Kuno and Vashti, ‘Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves are frighteningly inert.’ (152). The progression of Kuno across geographical boundaries enables him to comprehend the oppressive and temporal structure of society. His experience on the surface of the earth allows him to witness the Machine’s renouncement of nature and an attempt of its obliteration. The Machine sees no distinction between human, vegetation and animal, ‘Oh, the whole dell was full of the things. They were denuding it, and the white snouts of others peeped out of the hole, ready if needed. Everything that could be moved they brought – brushwood, bundles of fern, everything, and down we all went intertwined into hell.’ (133). Haraway depicts two perspectives of the cyborg, ‘From one perspective, a cyborg is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet…From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities of which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines…’ (154). In occupying a role in society, we can understand the status of Vashti as the intelligentsia that parallels the functional status of the worm. However, the functional status of Vashti is represented as a distortion of a joint kinship that rejects the relationship between human and nature. Her reaction to the knowledge of Kuno’s unpermitted visit to the surface of the earth, ‘It is not the kind of thing that spiritually-minded people do…but there is no legal objection to it.’ (124). Her status of the intelligentsia performs with unbending intent to capitulate to the objectives of the Machine.
Haraway describes a contemporary representation of a relationship between animal and society that recognises the nature’s holistic relevance, ‘Movements for animal rights are not irrational denials of human uniqueness they are a clear sighted recognition across the discredited breach of nature and culture.’ (152). In order to dominate the human, the Machine has managed to replicate a biological order, but in doing so, suppresses the abilities of society to encounter nature and comprehend their place within it. Within the Machine, nature is represented as non-functional and marginalised and this exposes the relationship between society and nature as illegitimate. Haraway distinguishes a source of responsibility with the relationship between human and technology, ‘The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us; we are they.’ (180). Kuno is represented as a search for the ability of society to regain responsibility of his technological society by the rebellion against the grid of control upon the planet. This represents the human, as a man on his own terms, thinking, feeling, and active in battling against the domination of society that has extinguished the relationship between man and nature.
In conclusion we have discovered that examining the relationship between human and social structure, reveals a problem with the definition of disability within the novel and contemporary society. The inversion of disability in contemporary society has enabled us to uncover the detrimental representation when determining a social group. In ‘The Machine Stops’ we have observed a centralised governing power that prompts the marginalisation of sections of its society and can be understood as a model that negotiates society into an unworkable, fractured and limited model that fails in recognising dynamic and divergent aspects of man. The performative qualities of society has also enabled us to recognise that disability can be represented in the form of social domination. The relationship between technology and centralised government inhibits society of consciously recognising its oppressive circumstances and alternative representations of society. This is achieved by enveloping society within constraints of fear. The fear of marginalisation encourages society into the performance of functional duties within limited boundaries. These boundaries are constructed from society’s attempt to replicate a distorted biological model of society. Moreover, we can observe a representation of disability in society’s renouncement of nature, that favours an idealistic model of oppression, while disregarding a model of society that allows the development of a harmonious relationship between human, nature and technology.
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