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(2015
midterm assignment) Model Student Midterm answers 2015 (Index) Essay 2: Personal / professional topic |
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Fariha Khalil
29
June 2015
The Possible fates of the Human Race
As a society we tend to think that the human species will evolve into something
magnificently bright but this might not be the case. Until now, I never imagined
a future in which the human race degenerates.
I always thought of humans to be progressing and evolving with time and
becoming more and more advance and intelligent, but never regressing.
In the novel
The Time Machine, the time
traveller travels to the year A.D 802,701 where he encounters two distinct
species of the human race, the Eloi and the Morlocks, which are a dominant
metaphor in the novel. These two
species symbolize the degeneration of the human race.
The Time Machine further reiterates the fact that there could be a
possible reversal in evolution from human to primitive in our future. When the
Time Traveller traveled back in time, he expected to see a forward evolvement in
the human species. Instead, he sees that the human species have evolved into two
separate species. One of the species was the Eloi, angel like species with
childlike qualities, while the other species was the Morlocks. The
Morlocks were cannibalistic hairy creatures that lived underground. The Time
Traveller was hoping to see how the society has progressed since back from his
time, but instead he saw the opposite.
Similarly, Parable of the Sower
is set in a post apocalyptic world where humans are quickly regressing to their
animal instincts.
Parable
tells a story of survival after what appears to be an apocalyptic event. What
is described in the story could be an evolutionary process that has occurred and
evolved over a short or not as long of a time frame as one first imagines. The
apocalyptic event that devastated the planet was through drugs, severe climate
issues as well as a breakdown in the democratic government of the U.S., issues
not unlike the ones that plague our own society today. This particular novel
describes a dystopian existence of a future set in a situation within a very
fanatical, scary and overall crazy society, which is the complete opposite of a
utopia. In the novel
the characters are minimized to their basic
human instincts and needs. Fire, as one of four classical elements, is used in
this book as a sort of drug equivalent to sex in its ability to inflict human
passion (111). We see that people are brought back to such natural elements as
fire in order to receive gratification and pleasure, and ultimately wreak havoc
(246). In order to survive, the characters are forced to steal, scavenge and
rob.
Living in this day and time, we as a society imagine the future as a time with flying cars, and immensely advanced science and technology. We always see ourselves improving and evolving with time that it never occurs to us that we just might be heading in the opposite direction. Instead of having flying cars in the future, we might have to learn to live in a walled community and scavenge and steal just to survive. This did not occur to me either until I read the evolutionary narratives Parable of the Sower, and The Time Machine. Our future might not be as bright and magnificent as we imagine, it could be very dark and dreary instead.
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