Heptapod B represents both the effect of language on thought and the incompatibility of free will with knowing the future. Heptapod B is the written language of aliens, called heptapods, who experience time differently than humans do. Rather than experiencing time as a sequence moving from past to future, heptapods experience their entire lives simultaneously, with every moment occurring at once. When the heptapods come into orbit around Earth and send down communication devices called “looking glasses” to the surface, the U.S. government recruits the linguist Dr. Louise Banks to learn their language. As Louise learns Heptapod B, the way she experiences time begins to change. Rather than experiencing time as a sequence, she begins to experience time more in the way heptapods do: she begins “remembering” the future. Thus, Heptapod B symbolizes the idea that languages don’t simply convey our thoughts. Languages also determine the kind of thoughts that we think.
In addition to representing the effect of language on thought, Heptapod B also represents the incompatibility of free will with knowing the future. Learning Heptapod B allows Louise to remember the future, but in remembering the future, she becomes unable to act contrary to it in any way. Before she learned Heptapod B, Louise might have supposed that knowing the future was impossible because of free will, since someone could always choose to act differently than they were predicted to act. In learning Heptapod B and knowing the future, Louise realizes that it is not knowing the future, but free will itself, that is impossible for her.
Heptapod B Quotes in Story of Your Life
Seven lidless eyes ringed the top of the heptapod’s body. It walked back to the doorway from which it entered, made a brief sputtering sound, and returned to the center of the room followed by another heptapod; at no point did it ever turn around. Eerie, but logical; with eyes on all sides, any direction might as well be ‘forward.’
“Their script isn’t word divided; a sentence is written by joining the logograms for the constituent words. They join the logograms by rotating and modifying them. Take a look.” I showed him how the logograms were rotated.
“So they can read a word with equal ease no matter how it’s rotated,” Gary said. He turned to look at the heptapods, impressed. “I wonder if it’s a consequence of their body’s radial symmetry: their bodies have no ‘forward’ direction, so maybe their writing doesn’t either. Highly neat.”
It won’t have been that long since you enjoyed going shopping with me; it will forever astonish me how quickly you grow out of one phase and enter another. Living with you will be like aiming for a moving target; you’ll always be further along than I expect.
There’s a joke that I once heard a comedienne tell. It goes like this: “I’m not sure if I’m ready to have children. I asked a friend of mine who has children, ‘Suppose I do have kids. What if when they grow up, they blame me for everything that’s wrong with their lives?’ She laughed and said, ‘What do you mean, if’”
That’s my favorite joke.
As I grew more fluent, semagraphic designs would appear fully formed, articulating even complex ideas all at once. My thought processes weren’t moving any faster as a result, though. Instead of racing forward, my mind hung balanced on the symmetry underlying the semagrams. The semagrams seemed to be something more than language; they were almost like mandalas. I found myself in a meditative state, contemplating the way in which premises and conclusions were interchangeable. There was no direction inherent in the way propositions were connected, no “train of thought” moving along a particular route; all the components in an act of reasoning were equally powerful, all having identical precedence.
The existence of free will meant that we couldn’t know the future. And we knew free will existed because we had direct experience of it. Volition was an intrinsic part of consciousness.
Or was it? What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?
When you are three, you’ll pull a dishtowel off the kitchen counter and bring that salad bowl down on top of you. I’ll make a grab for it, but I’ll miss. The edge of the bowl will leave you with a cut, on the upper edge of your forehead, that will require a single stitch. Your father and I will hold you, sobbing and stained with Caesar dressing, as we wait in the emergency room for hours.
I reached out and took the bowl from the shelf. The motion didn’t feel like something I was forced to do. Instead, it seemed just as urgent as my rushing to catch the bowl when it falls on you: an instinct that I felt right in following.
NOW is the only moment you’ll perceive; you’ll live in the present tense. In many ways, it’s an enviable state.
Freedom isn’t an illusion; it’s perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it’s simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It’s like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There’s no “correct” interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can’t see both at the same time.
“Well if you already know how the story goes, why do you need me to read it to you?”
“Cause I wanna hear it!”
Working with the heptapods changed my life. I met your father and learned Heptapod B, both of which make it possible for me to know you now, here on the patio in the moonlight. Eventually, many years from now, I’ll be without your father, and without you. All I will have left from this moment is the heptapod language. So I pay close attention, and note every detail.
From the beginning I knew my destination, and I chose my route accordingly. But am I working toward an extreme of joy, or of pain? Will I achieve a minimum, or a maximum?
Heptapod B Symbol Timeline in Story of Your Life
