LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Final Exam Essays 2013 assignment Sample answers for Essay 2: personal / professional interests

Adria Weger

5 July 2013

The Ultimate Question 2.0

Alexander Pope, Essay on Man

Every story asks the question, who am I? The events and problems undertaken by the characters help to shape the narrative, but ultimately define who the characters, and sometimes even the reader, truly become. In a systematic effort to define human nature, Alexander Pope claims we are made up of two contrasting drives, Self-love and Reason. Self-love is that part of us that is selfish; it harbors his passions and appetites. Reason is what we use to overcome those appetites. Where Self-love gives us ambition, Reason gives us the fortitude to follow through. Pope asserts that we cannot exist without both aspects of human nature. Literature, science-fiction in particular, offers us a means to explore identity in many ways, including: discovering hidden aspects of self through letting go of Reason, how we may choose one over the other and how that affects relationships or survival, and what might happen when we begin to separate these two drives.

Some stories approach the question, who am I, by looking at sexuality. Gender roles and cultural expectations play a big role in sexual identity, but human nature is what drives it. In “Better Be Ready ‘bout Half Past Eight,” Alison Baker wonders what it would be like to be suddenly confronted with your own sexuality. After learning that his best friend has decided to become a woman after 38 years of living as a man, Byron struggles to understand the decision which he deems mutilation (27). Byron analyzes everything; it is his attachment to Reason that prevents him from understanding the pain his friend has experienced for decades. However, it is through his scientific, over-rational mind that Byron finally begins to, if not understand, accept his friend’s decision. Through a series of ‘experiments’, Byron explores his feminine side and begins to see how “he’d make a terrific woman” (28). This process allows him to see that gender may not define identity, and joins his conflicting drives of Reason and Self-Love letting him understand and even relate to his friend.

Another relationship-driven text, “Somebody Up There Likes Me” depicts a marriage between a Reason-driven man, and a Self-love-motivated woman; a couple who appear to have a well-balanced marriage; and a potential sociopath who has a happy family image in one house, and abuse-tests (228) computers in another. Snookie is the wandering woman who is never satisfied where she is but does not have the drive to follow something through to completion. Dante is so stuck in his mind that he cannot see the forest for the trees. Their marriage is falling apart because the two value different aspects of their own nature.

Their friends, Boyce and Janet, have a nice balance in their marriage. Boyce tries to bring consciousness to technology through a “computerized mind of the world” (218), and Janet, as a Jungian therapist (219), tries to “bring conscious and unconscious elements of the psyche into balance” (http://www.nyaap.org/about-jungian-analysis). This balance allows the couple to encourage and support when losses occur, rather than become scared or discouraged, which builds the marriage into more than an agreement, but a true union between two people.

Finally, there’s Mickey. Upon first entering his house, Dante meets the ‘happy’ family. Mickey must have a stable enough life to support his wife and children. But in his shop, Mickey can give over purely to Self-love—mutilating, attacking, destroying—he reverts to his most primal nature. “He had just completed a kill and he wouldn’t want to fight. He’d feel unthreatened and kingly. Unless overtly attacked, he’d be docile” (228), Dante’s description of Mickey’s mental state sounds like the narration of an Animal Planet documentary. Here, in this place, Mickey is free and safe to let out his truest nature. But he is not completely un-evolved. Like a child, he becomes concerned when Dante cries, and gives him presents to make him feel better (234). Mickey needs an outlet to express his Self-love desires, but is human enough to let Reason influence other aspects of his life. Through this story, Ralph Lombreglia explores many facets of human nature: how, when they work together, relationships become stronger; when they don’t, they can fall apart; and sometimes, you have to go back to your most primal self to cope with who you are.

Karen Joy Fowler’s “The Poplar Street Study” also explores relationships, but relationships within a community. When semi-acquainted neighbors becomes sequestered by aliens and separated from their normal lives, different households react with varying levels of Reason and Self-Love. The men of the story react in a very primal, defend the family manner, responding to their Self-Love instincts. They make an inventory of their supplies and weapons (150) and discuss attack strategies which help them feel in control of the situation.  Mrs. Desmond reacts with Reason, “it had occurred to her that she could easily dominate a group of people in swimsuits if she dressed appropriately” (148); she wants to provide a united front, with herself as leader of the community. Reason stimulates her ambition and drives her to take action. However, neither of these approaches proves effective with the aliens. It is only the little girl, Sunny, through her child-like adaptability, who proves capable of leading the community; “She used this expertise to bully the reluctant grown-ups into doing what she wished” (158). Had the community listened to the men or Mrs. Desmond alone, they would continue to fail. Only the person who balances both Reason and Self-Love can manage the community as a united force, and adapt to their new environment.

Showing a different side of mankind, Parable of the Sower explores how we may revert to Self-love when faced with the apocalypse. When resources are scarce, we have less need for Reason, and more for survival. The impulses Self-love offers means we revert back to a primal state, regressing past hunting and gathering to a ruthless cutthroat need for survival. When society reverts to these primal instincts, chaos abounds. It becomes okay to take from those in need because your need is greater; “there was more danger where there were more people” (154), the more you possess, the more you have to loose, be it belongings, food, money, or lives.

However, as Lauren and her group show, this pure abandonment of Reason does not equate to survival of the fittest. Like Sunny, Lauren exemplifies the balance between the two forces of human nature. Her ability to balance both Reason and Self-love is what helps her and the small community she leads to survive; her “we haven’t hit bottom yet” (328) mentality helps her to stay strong when the world around her falls apart.

Where Parable of the Sower explores a digression in dangerous times, The Time Machine looks at man from a distant evolutionary aspect. In this text, H.G. Wells explores what becomes of man when he separates the two aspects of human nature. The image of humanity the Time Traveler discovers is far from what he expected, “I had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly be infinitely ahead of our selves in all their appliances” (70). Instead he found the Eloi and the Morlocks.

“Above ground, you have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty” (63)—the Eloi. These beautiful, child-like descendants of man exist solely on the whims of Self-love. They eat when they are hungry, sleep when tired, have no motivating forces in their nature, containing the “now purposeless energy of mankind” (41). Evolving from the rich and privileged of society, the Eloi appear to have no problems and live in harmony amongst themselves. Like children, they fear the dark, or rather the creatures the darkness brings: “below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour” (63). These creatures, the Morlocks, are not the polar opposite of the Eloi appearing as hyper-rational, reasonable creatures. Rather, they operate in a devolved sense of Reason. They still aim to fulfill their basic needs, but as carnivores, they hunt the cattle-like Eloi. Underground they maintain and operate machines producing goods for the Eloi, much like a farmer takes care of his herd before slaughter. These creatures, products of evolution, show what may happen when society solves all the problems of the world. Without the need to strive to make things better, we can become fat, dumb, and happy like the Eloi, or labor driven, cunning, but sequestered like the Morlocks.

“House of Bones” by Robert Silverberg also looks at humanity from an evolutionary aspect, but instead of projecting what may become of us, Silverberg asks what we came from. The time-traveling narrator expected primitive man to be solely primal, existing for their Self-Love desires. The highly developed, Reason using tribe he discovers contradicts everything he thought he would find. He notes, “I realize how alien they really are” (88), not for how different they are from modern man, but for how similar. The tribe’s ability to balance both Reason and Self-Love prove to the narrator that they are not savages, but civilized. Because the narrator is so different, the tribe questions his humanity. His quest to find the Scavenger proves the compassion and humane qualities we value in both him to the tribe, and the tribe to him. This revelation that he is both human, and fully developed in Reason and Self-Love, allows the narrator to assimilate fully into the tribe, whereas before, he remained an outsider.

Looking at these and other stories, we can always ask the ultimate question, who am I? These stories not only explore human nature at its best and worst, but they make the reader question himself. Do I identify with Byron, stuck in my ways but desperately trying to understand my friend, or Zach, trapped in an identity that seems foreign? Am I on the path to the child-like lifestyle of the Eloi, or destined to become the underground working Morlock? Are these people who seem so foreign really so different from us? Or are we more alike than we think? Questioning our natures like this is what makes us the well-balanced creatures of Man that we are.