“Story of Your Life” suggests that prejudice is antithetical to communication. The story depicts the first contact between humanity and an alien species called heptapods. Throughout the story, the human military and government officials’ intolerant attitude toward the aliens contrasts with human researchers’ open, communicative attitude. When Colonel Weber approaches the story’s narrator, the linguist Dr. Louise Banks, to get her opinion on a recording of the heptapods’ speech, he’s immediately aggressive and suspicious. He tries to tell Louise as little as he can about the recording, and although Louise is academically qualified to speak to the aliens, he initially refuses to let her see them. Rather than wanting to share information with the heptapods, he is adamant that they should learn as little about human language and technology as possible, even though the heptapods must inevitably learn some amount of human language for Louise to learn their language. At almost every turn, Colonel Weber suspects the heptapods of nefarious motives and thereby impedes human researchers’ attempts to understand them. Moreover, his sole motive in facilitating communication with the heptapods seems to be to trick them into sharing their advanced technology. His prejudice toward outsiders closes him off from genuine communication.
By contrast, Louise is interested in communicating with the heptapods simply for the sake of learning. She undergoes a painstaking process to learn the aliens’ spoken language Heptapod A and their written language Heptapod B. In learning Heptapod B, Louise realizes that the heptapods have a radically “other” understanding of time and causality than do humans. Whereas humans experience time sequentially from past to future and see events in terms of cause and effect, the heptapods experience time as a simultaneity and see events in terms of goal-directed behavior. By learning Heptapod B, Louise not only becomes able to communicate with the heptapods but also appreciates and shares in their perception of time: she gains the heptapod ability to “remember” the future. She adamant that the way heptapods perceive the world is just as real and valid as the way humans do—it’s just different. Notably, while Louise and another linguist named Burghart become able to understand and participate in the heptapods’ alien worldview, none of the military and government personnel who want to exploit the heptapods ever do. And, importantly, the researchers are only able to gain this knowledge by working together and across different disciplines, emphasizing the value of collaboration. Thus, “Story of Your Life” shows how aggression and prejudice against outsiders impede understanding, whereas open communication fosters understanding.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Otherness, Prejudice, and Communication ThemeTracker
Otherness, Prejudice, and Communication Quotes in Story of Your Life
Colonel Weber frowned. “You seem to be implying that no alien could have learned human languages by monitoring our broadcasts.”
“I doubt it. They’d need instructional material specifically designed to teach human languages to nonhumans. Either that, or interaction with a human. If they had either of those, they could learn a lot from TV, but otherwise, they wouldn’t have a starting point.”
The colonel clearly found this interesting; evidently his philosophy was, the less the aliens knew, the better. Gary Donnelly read the colonel’s expression too and rolled his eyes. I suppressed a smile.
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.”
“I should emphasize that our relationship with the heptapods need not be adversarial. This is not a situation where every gain on their part is a loss on ours, or vice versa. If we handle ourselves correctly, both we and the heptapods can come out winners."
"You mean it’s a non-zero-sum game?” Gary said in mock incredulity. “Oh my gosh.”
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.
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!”
