Respirators—a form of protective equipment that make it possible to visit Earth’s surface—symbolize humanity’s innate desire to be close to nature. In the world of the story, the air aboveground has become toxic to human beings—whether this is the product of environmental degradation, or changes in human physiology from living underground, or some combination of both, isn’t clear. Because of these conditions, most people live underground in pods, where a technological system called the Machine ostensibly provides all of their basic needs. However, many people still want to see the surface, and at the start of the story, it is relatively easy to do so by requesting a permit and a respirator. The existence of respirators suggests that even in this society, people still want to experience the natural world, despite their separation from it.
Kuno, who wants to experience the natural world as human beings once did, wishes he could go to the surface “naked,” without the aid of a respirator. This wish is almost fulfilled when his respirator is blown away from him, and he miraculously survives because some of the artificial air blown from underground settles in the valley around him. Kuno’s desire suggests that respirators, however necessary they might be, are still a poor substitute for a more direct experience of the natural world.
But even this imperfect connection to the world above ground is cut off when the Committee of the Machine abolishes respirators. The reason behind this decision seems to be that respirators allow people to escape, however briefly, the Machine’s direct control (even if the respirators are still connected to the Machine). To use respirators seems to be an acknowledgement that the Machine is not everything, and that there is value to experiencing the natural world. However, this decision turns out to be one of the most severe mistakes in the story, because the elimination of respirators makes it so that the Machine’s eventual collapse condemns the underground inhabitants to certain death without the air that the Machine generates. This ending shows how disastrous it can be when humanity tries to deny our fundamental impulse to connect with the natural world.
Respirators Quotes in The Machine Stops
“The mortar had somehow rotted, and I soon pushed some more tiles in, and clambered after them into the darkness, and the spirits of the dead comforted me. I don’t know what I mean by that. I just say what I felt. I felt, for the first time, that a protest had been lodged against corruption, and that even as the dead were comforting me, so I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity existed, and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly explain this? It was naked, humanity seemed naked, and all these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the world with us, nor will they follow us out, nor do they matter supremely while we are here. Had I been strong, I would have torn off every garment I had, and gone out into the outer air unswaddled. But this is not for me, nor perhaps for my generation. I climbed with my respirator and my hygienic clothes and my dietetic tabloids! Better thus than not at all.”
No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had overreached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
Respirators Symbol Timeline in The Machine Stops
