By posing a simple hypothesis, Roald Dahl’s 1949 short story “The Sound Machine” effectively reminds the reader why the genre is called speculative fiction. The prospect of being able to hear higher and lower pitches may not immediately strike one as particularly important. But the horrific discovery that Klausner makes in the story—that plants and trees cry out in pain when cut or axed—has a dark and insidious undercurrent, raising the question of if he truly was meant to uncover those findings. As the story unfolds and Klausner grapples with the weight of his discovery, Dahl implies that some knowledge is better left unknown, simultaneously placing limitations on both the utility of science and humankind’s ability and right to keep up with it.
Dahl’s description of the machine that Klausner uses to access hidden sounds, as well as the way that people interact with the machine, keys the reader into its underlying sinister nature. This can be seen from the first physical description of the machine, as it is compared to “a child’s coffin,” suggesting that the machine will have a corrupting influence on whoever uses it. Furthermore, the way that Klausner interacts with the machine demonstrates how the contraption incites dangerously fervent fascination. Klausner is absorbed in it entirely, paying meticulous attention to every detail with “an air of urgency about the way he worked, of breathlessness, of strong suppressed excitement.” The machine has a similarly captivating effect on the Doctor, who comes to check on Klausner’s sore throat. Notably “intrigued by the remarkable complexity of its inside,” the Doctor asks his patient about the device, admitting, “You’ve made me inquisitive.” Despite this excitement, both men also seem anxious and wary about the machine. The Doctor plainly states that it is a “rather frightening-looking thing,” suggesting that the machine is perhaps not such a harmless contraption. However it is Klausner’s own fear that “the machine might not work”—and “also of what might happen if it did”—that truly illuminates the idea that there may be consequences to unlocking the secrets the machine is designed to reveal.
The question of whether humans are worthy of some knowledge becomes central to the story as Klausner first uses the machine and makes the discovery that plants can feel pain. With this, Dahl seems to be recognizing that obtaining new knowledge doesn’t always make life easier, sometimes presenting ramifications that humans may not be equipped to contend with. In doing so, he levies a criticism of science and the danger some of its advancements may represent, hinting at this idea rather directly as Klausner turns the machine on and feels as if his “ears are going up and up toward a secret and forbidden territory, a dangerous ultrasonic region where ears had never been before and had no right to be.” The idea that this revelation is too much for humanity to come to grips with continues to take root in the way other characters in the story perceive Klausner as a raving lunatic, with the Doctor noting that Klausner exhibits “a quality of […] immense, immeasurable distance, as though the mind were far away from where the body was” and neighbor Mrs. Saunders believing that Klausner has catapulted from merely “peculiar” to “completely crazy.” This notion of insanity is also recurrent in Dahl’s diction, as Klausner frequently describes the machine’s potential secrets as capable of “driv[ing] us mad if only our ears were tuned to hear the sound.” With these characterizations, Dahl suggests that Klausner is, in fact, mad for trying to unlock secrets that humans have no right to know.
Despite being written off as insane by those around him, Klausner remains dedicated in his pursuit of ever more information, which Dahl suggests is a dangerous game. Though initially terrified of the machine and his newfound discovery, Klausner quickly readopts the energetic, inquisitive nature he had in the story’s beginning and decides to test the theories himself by taking an axe to a tree despite dreading “the thought of the noise” that it would make. This rapid shift from fear right back to cold clinical analysis reveals Dahl’s implicit criticism of science’s callous form of desensitization. However, Klausner does deviate from the mad scientist stereotype in the way he appears to grow through the rest of the story, becoming greatly shaken by the thought that all plant life, even fruits and vegetables, may be just as sentient and capable of feeling pain as humans are. Even still, Klausner pushes through these feelings and continues to harm a beech tree in the park to prove to the Doctor that plants indeed make sound and feel pain, suggesting that science lacks moral boundaries.
The ramifications of Klausner’s discovery raise some serious questions regarding the nature of mankind’s relationship to science and knowledge. The allure of the unknown may be attractive, but it is all too possible that our natural inclination towards curiosity may open up knowledge we were far better off without. Noting the story’s 1949 publication date, it is likely that World War II was still quite fresh on Dahl’s mind, which provides an interesting way of interpreting his exploration of the intersection of humanity’s ambition and arrogance. This is perhaps best seen in Klausner’s reductive statement that his machine is “just an idea.” The very same could be said of gas chambers, tanks, fighter jets, and atomic bombs. By painting a small-scale situation in which science asks “could it?” instead of “should it?” all too late, Dahl may be touching upon very timely fears.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Scientific Advancements and Forbidden Knowledge ThemeTracker
Scientific Advancements and Forbidden Knowledge Quotes in The Sound Machine
It was a warm summer evening and Klausner walked quickly through the front gate and around the side of the house and into the garden at the back. He went on down the garden until he came to a wooden shed and he unlocked the door, went inside and closed the door behind him. The interior of the shed was an unpainted room. Against one wall, on the left, there was a long wooden workbench, and on it, among a littering of wires and batteries and small sharp tools, there stood a black box about three feet long, the shape of a child's coffin.
All the while he kept speaking softly to himself, nodding his head, smiling sometimes, his hands always moving, the fingers moving swiftly, deftly, inside the box, his mouth twisting into curious shapes when a thing was delicate or difficult to do, saying, “Yes…Yes…And now this one…Yes…Yes…But is this right? Is it—where's my diagram?…Ah, yes…Of course…Yes, yes…That's right…And now…Good…Good…Yes…Yes, yes, yes.” His concentration was intense; his movements were quick; there was an air of urgency about the way he worked, of breathlessness, of strong suppressed excitement.
“It’s just an idea.”
“Well, speaking very roughly, any note so high that it has more than fifteen thousand vibrations a second—we can't hear it. Dogs have better ears than us. You know you can buy a whistle whose note is so high-pitched that you can't hear it at all. But a dog can hear it.”
“Yes, I've seen one,” the Doctor said.
“Of course you have. And up the scale, higher than the note of that whistle, there is another note—a vibration if you like, but I prefer to think of it as a note. You can't hear that one either. And above that there is another and another rising right up the scale forever and ever and ever, an endless succession of notes…an infinity of notes…there is a note—if only our ears could hear it—so high that it vibrates a million times a second…and another a million times as high as that…and on and on, higher and higher, as far as numbers go, which is…infinity…eternity…beyond the stars.”
Klausner was becoming more animated every moment. He was a small frail man, nervous and twitchy, with always moving hands. His large head inclined toward his left shoulder as though his neck sere not quite strong enough to support it rigidly. His face was smooth and pale, almost white, and the pale grey eyes that blinked and peered from behind a pair of steel spectacles were bewildered, unfocussed, remote. He was a frail, nervous, twitchy little man, a moth of a man, dreamy and distracted; suddenly fluttering and animated; and now the Doctor, looking at that strange pale face and those pale grey eyes, felt that somehow there was about this little person a quality of distance, of immense, immeasurable distance, as though the mind were far away from where the body was.
“I believe,” he said, speaking more slowly now, “that there is a whole world of sound about us all the time that we cannot hear. It is possible that up there in those high-pitched inaudible regions there is a new exciting music being made, with subtle harmonies and fierce grinding discords, a music so powerful that it would drive us mad if only our ears were tuned to hear the sound of it. There may be anything…for all we know there may—"
“Yes,” the Doctor said. “But it's not very probable.”
“Why not? Why not?” Klausner pointed to a fly sitting on a small roll of copper wire on the workbench. “You see that fly? What sort of a noise is that fly making now? None that one can hear. But for all we know the creature may be whistling like mad on a very high note, or barking or croaking or singing a song. It's got a mouth, hasn't it? It's got a throat!”
He plugged the wire connections from the earphones into the machine and put the earphones over his ears. The movement of his hands were quick and precise. He was excited, and breathed loudly and quickly through his mouth. He kept on talking to himself with little words of comfort and encouragement, as though he were afraid—afraid that the machine might not work and afraid also of what might happen if it did. He stood there in the garden beside the wooden table, so pale, small, and thin that he looked like an ancient, consumptive, bespectacled child. […] As he listened, he became conscious of a curious sensation, a feeling that his ears were stretching out away from his head, that each ear was connected to his head by a thin stiff wire, like a tentacle, and that the wires were lengthening, that the ears were going up and up toward a secret and forbidden territory, a dangerous ultrasonic region where ears had never been before and had no right to be.
From the moment that he started pulling to the moment when the stem broke, he heard—he distinctly heard in the earphones—a faint high-pitched cry, curiously inanimate. He took another daisy and did it again. Once more he heard the cry, but he wasn't so sure now that it expressed pain. No, it wasn't pain; it was surprise. Or was it? It didn't really express any of the feelings or emotions known to a human being. It was just a cry, a neutral, stony cry—a single emotionless note, expressing nothing. It had been the same with the roses. He had been wrong in calling it a cry of pain. A flower probably didn’t feel pain. It felt something else which we didn't know about—something called toin or spud or plinuckment, or anything you like.
He tried to remember what the shriek of the tree had sounded like, but he couldn’t. He could remember only that it had been enormous and frightful and that it had made him feel sick with horror. He tried to imagine what sort of noise a human would make if he had to stand anchored to the ground while someone deliberately swung a small sharp thing at his leg so that the blade cut in deep and wedged itself in the cut. Same sort of noise perhaps? No. Quite different. The noise of the tree was worse than any known human noise because of that frightening, toneless, throatless quality. He began to wonder about other living things, and he thought immediately of a field of wheat, a field of wheat standing up straight and yellow and alive, with the mower going through it, cutting the stems, five hundred stems a second, every second. Oh, my God, what would that sound be like? […] no, he thought. I do not want to go to a wheat field with my machine. I would never eat bread after that.
