The Quarantine Stops (I hope)

During this coronavirus pandemic, we all stay isolated to slow the spread of the virus, while this isolation is important for the health of society, it kinda sucks. Being stuck inside with the same ~four people and not much to do leaves people feeling more irritable and annoyed, but the worst part is I think I’m getting used to it. Presumably, the same feeling evolved into the extreme isolation of the residents inside The Machine. The Machine residents were forced underground by some sort of catastrophe in the atmosphere of the planet. It is unclear whether solitude was a pre-designed part of machine society, or something that naturally occurred as the residents lost motive to leave their dwellings and sank deeper into complacency, but the residents ended up abhorring new experiences and face to face interaction.

At the start of quarantine, the monotony of sitting at home with nothing productive to do besides schoolwork was mind-numbingly boring, but six weeks in, and I am much more comfortable doing absolutely nothing all day. But because I know that one day quarantine will end, I still manage to motivate myself to have some variety in my day, through cooking, listening to new music, practicing my instruments, and doing bodyweight workouts to not atrophy like the residents in the machine. Without the knowledge that I will one day have to interact with real people again one day, I realized that I am much more susceptible to the urge to do nothing all day that I thought I was when I first read this story.

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 25, 2020 at 3:39 PM

    Really interesting connections between our current experience sheltering-in-place and the representation of the Machine in Forster's story. Your point that the characters in the story may have gradually become hostile to in-person interactions (we don't know) is interesting in relation to your point that over the course of the last couple months we've adjusted to not leaving our homes (which I've also observed in myself). I do wonder what sort of adjustments we'll all have to experience as we move back towards a more "normal" world; hopefully we adjust to socializing and being out in the world again as quickly as we have to being at home all the time. -Ms. O'Brien

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