Denial and Rationalization Theme Analysis

The presence of a healthy amount of skepticism is often considered integral to a scientist’s success in their field, but what happens when that guarded empirical nature is put up against a discovery that shakes them to their core? Dahl explores this question through the ways in which both Klausner and the Doctor react to the machine’s capabilities, examining their similar attempts to rationalize and dismiss the sounds they hear. In doing so, he characterizes the characters’ denial as a mistake humankind is all too prone to making, and notes that their refusal to believe or acknowledge any information that makes uncomfortable is ultimately fruitless.

As the machine’s inventor, Klausner goes through a range of emotions attempting to process the discovery it allowed him to make, shifting from excitement to fear to cold rationalization. Though he is characterized as a wispy “moth of a man,” Klausner is said have an intense investment in his work on the machine, so much so that he causes the Doctor and Mrs. Saunders to actively worry about not only his mental state, but their own safety around him as well. This kind of devotion to his work momentarily tempers Klausner’s initial fear of the machine after it allows him to hear Mrs. Saunders’ roses cry out for the first time, as his inquisitive scientific mind quickly converts the sound they make from a “frightful, throatless […] cry of pain” to “just a cry, a neutral, stony cry” born from some fantastical feeling humans can’t understand called “toin or spurl or plinuckment, or anything you like.” With this, Klausner attempts to sidestep the idea that plants feel pain and thus avoid the fear and guilt bound up in such a discovery.

This attempt to rationalize the “curiously inanimate” sounds through the lens of science ultimately proves to be fruitless in the wake of the horrible images Klausner now imagines, however. His frenetic yet calculated curiosity meets its limits as he ponders what humans would feel in the tree’s place, or at the combined sound of “Five hundred wheat plants screaming together.” The image of him regretting the deep cuts he made in the tree and “touching the edges of the gash, trying to press them together to close the wound” is certainly far removed from his previous detached, scientific interest. When he asks the Doctor to apply the iodine to the tree’s cuts nightly at the story’s end, he now seems to be entirely absorbed by guilt and empathy, viewing it just as he would an injured person.

Though he is noted to possess a degree of interest in Klausner and his strange machine, The Doctor’s curiosity regarding this invention of his “strange patient” does not seem to be nearly as zealous, with him quickly writing off his ideas as “not very probable” and the man himself as little more than crazy. It is only upon hearing the “hysterical note” in Klausner’s voice on the phone that the Doctor is motivated to give Klausner’s findings any kind of further attention. However, when the Doctor straps on the headphones and listens as Klausner strikes a tree with an axe, part of the tree topples over, and the Doctor rips off the headphones and flees to safety. When Klausner asks if he heard the tree cry out, the Doctor turns nervous and shifty. While it’s possible that the Doctor’s nervousness stems from his newfound fear of Klausner—who is still holding an axe at this point and has grown increasingly unstable and excitable—the Doctor’s awkward dismissal that he heard anything may signify his denial that Klausner’s machine actually works.

By writing off Klausner as crazy and denying having heard anything, the Doctor may be trying to keep himself free of guilt, or at least avoid directly facing the horrors that the discovery entails. But the lingering seed of the “idea” that Klausner planted in him may never be able to be repressed. His outright denial that he heard anything may very well stem from his inability to cope with the horror of that knowledge, something Dahl represents as both pointless and reductive, seeming to suggest that the Doctor will still have to continue living with this knowledge despite his attempts to ignore it or rationalize it as the ravings of a madman.

By portraying two men of science in their respective battle and failure to process such a significant discovery, Dahl makes an implicit argument regarding the nature of humankind’s ability and willingness to comprehend the mysteries the world has to offer, potentially suggesting that some discoveries have an impact that cannot stand up to rationalization or dismissal.