Previous
Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Part 1: The Air-Ship
Explanation and Analysis:
“The Machine Stops” is set in a futuristic underground society run by a technological apparatus called the Machine. Forster hints throughout the story that humans had to move underground after an environmental catastrophe made the earth no longer livable. In this dystopian future, people can only breathe in their technology-mediated rooms below ground and must wear a respirator whenever they go up to the earth’s surface.
Forster takes time at the beginning of the story to help readers picture this underground, technologically advanced setting. The following passage, for example, establishes how long-distance communication works in this society:
[Vashti] touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness.
“Be quick!” she called, her irritation returning. “Be quick, Kuno; here I am in the dark wasting my time.” But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her.
Here Forster describes this society’s videoconferencing capability (something that, at the time he was writing in the early 20th century, was unthinkable). The descriptions of the “isolation knob,” “lighting apparatus,” and “round plate” that switches from blue to purple all contribute to effective world-building and help readers to understand that this is a society many years in the future.
It is worth noting that, at the time Forster was writing, society was experiencing rapid technological advancement—the telephone had been invented in 1876, the phonograph in 1877, radio in 1895, and airplanes in 1903. It was likely that Forster’s story emerged out of some of the anxiety of the time, as people worried that technology would disrupt humans’ relationships with each other and the natural world.
Related Themes:
