"Jeff, stop crying. Contrary to what you might think, there's not much data in crying."
One of the major themes of this story is that we must be weary of letting jobs override our basic feelings of empathy. Abnesti sacrificed his empathy in order to better and more easily complete his work, but in doing this he put two people through so much pain that they killed themselves. His intent was to keep performing his duty no matter the cost of human life.
Jeff decided that he would rather kill himself that witness anymore people get hurt. In ending his own life, he dedifferentiated himself from Abnesti. He stuck to his ideas of right and wrong while Abnesti simply obeyed what the higher command told him to do. The quotation above is representative of this theme because it represents the polarized relationship of Jeff and Abnesti. Abnesti is looking for results to please his superiors while Jeff is genuinely sad because of what he is forced to witness.
All in all this story is a cautionary tale of what could happen to society if we abandon our sense of empathy and live only to please our superiors.
Great post!
ReplyDeleteI think you wrote one of the very few posts, at least that I've read, that seems to consider Abnesti a human. Everyone else thinks him to be the controller of this "greater machine" when in actuality he is just as much a subject of it as Jeff or any of the other prisoners. Your post gives Abnesti feelings and emotions and it's a refreshing perspective.
What an interesting post, I felt the same way about most of the story, so its cool to find someone who has a similar interpretation of the story.
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