Maps to Anywhere Post #2

In Live Wire, a tone is set that permeates throughout the rest of the text. There seems to be some confliction between nature and artificial, past and future, and there are themes of ignorance, life, and death. In Live Wire, the electrical wire is likened to things more natural: arteries and blood. This demonstrates the initial confliction between artificial and natural, and the theme of death. The “live wire” isn’t really alive it’s said to be “almost alive”, yet the bystanders see that the noises from the wire are “coming from a common origin.” I believe that this is a misunderstanding on the part of the bystanders; it’s ignorance. It is ignorance that life can come from the artificial and it is ignorance of where we, human life, originate: nature. The wire is also lashing out at the children representing the potential death, the consequences, of this ignorance. These themes continually appear in most of the stories leading up to “House of the Future”. Another example of this ignorance is in the short sections entitled “Sudden Extinction” and “The Ark”. Both stories show a disregard for nature and our origins. In “Sudden Extinction” dinosaurs are regarded in an incredibly demeaning manner, such as their small brains and odd looking exteriors. This is then followed by a description of humans, particularly humans that are obsessed with physical fitness ad nauseam. This focus on the “brawn” of humans is hypocritical of humans judging the lack of “brain” in the dinosaurs. It is also of note that an apocalyptic scene is briefly described regarding how the dinosaurs became extinct. This ignorance on the part of humans is evidence of how disregarding primal origins, to the extent that we are blind to the inevitable future, will lead to humans being in a similar sudden extinction scenario, as we are just like the dinosaurs due to having “a common origin.” The Ark furthers this theme of ignorance for our origins and death in the form of humans maltreating animals, a symbol of nature. Overall, these short stories are well organized in their building up to “The House of the Future”. In “The House of the Future”, the narrator is averse to nature as “nature is the force to which [his] brother was forsaken.”He believes that the artificial will prevail over human nature; this is why he is so interested in this future home. He believes a utopia will come about, “humankind molded like plastic till virtue and peace and pleasure prevailed.” This vision of utopia is in stark contrast to the apocalyptic scenarios that were described in the previous stories. However, it is clear that this vision will not come to fruition. Just like in Live Wire, the artificial is misunderstood to be life: “The big airy skeletons of your skyscrapers are so sturdy, and your skins of glass so clear, there seems to be no building there and finally the light of the sky can burn through.” This sentence helps to solidify a main theme of this text, to not ignore the past and to mistake it for the future.