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Situational Irony
Part 2: The Mending Apparatus
Explanation and Analysis:
Forster’s writing style in “The Machine Stops” is characterized by free indirect discourse and poetic language. Free indirect discourse is a narrative style that involves a third-person narrator staying so close to a specific character’s perspective that, at points, they almost seem to blend with the character. For example, after Kuno asks Vashti to visit him and warns that “something tremendous might happen,” the narrator captures Vashti’s inner reaction in the following way: “The nonsense of a youthful man, no doubt, but she must go.” Rather than having the narrator say, “Vashti thought to herself that this was the nonsense of a youthful man,” the narrator relays Vashti’s inner thoughts directly, as if they were the narrator’s own. This sort of free indirect discourse brings readers closer to a character’s perspective, in this case helping them to understand Vashti better as a character.
Forster’s writing style is also full of evocative poetic language. When the narrator explains why people in this society kill babies who are too physically strong, for example, they don’t merely state this, but spend several sentences appealing to readers’ emotions:
Humanitarians may protest, but it would have been no true kindness to let an athlete live; he would never have been happy in that state of life to which the Machine had called him; would have yearned for trees to climb, rivers to bathe in, meadows and hills against which he might measure his body. Man must be adapted to his surroundings, must he not? In the dawn of the world our weakly must be exposed on Mount Taygetus, in its twilight our strong will suffer euthanasia, that the Machine may progress, that the Machine may progress, that the Machine may progress eternally.
Forster’s poetic stylings come across in the ways that he describes the life that a strong baby born in this society would never have access to, using imagery to capture how the baby “would have yearned for trees to climb, rivers to bathe in, meadows and hills against which he might measure his body.” The language in this passage becomes even more lyrical as Forster writes of “the dawn of the world” and the “twilight,” ultimately ending with a haunting repetition of the phrase “that the Machine may progress.” This poignant passage highlights the barbaric nature of this supposedly advanced society, prioritizing “progress” and rationality over life and human emotions.
Related Themes:
