Please post your blog response to the story here. You can feel free to respond in any substantive way you choose (that means going beyond superficiality: likes, dislikes, summary, et cetera; none of that will be acceptable or given credit), but some starting points to consider are the structure of the story, the way in which it plays with and against the genre of science fiction, the effect and themes of the story, the language and craft, et cetera.
Anything less than 250 words will not receive credit.
“The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang was extremely well crafted. I have to say that it was definitely not what I was expecting. My initial thoughts were that it was going to be a straightforward you are “you” point of view storyline with a relatively realistic plot line—I was wrong on both accords due to the alien visitation and the subsequent “your” death. Despite having forty-five transitions with varied timelines, each event flowed together. The transitions to “your” childhood allowed the audience to feel more attached to the narrator, Louise, and her actions throughout the translation process of the heptapods. Initially, I thought that jumping timelines made the overall story unfocused but it had the contrary effect, it allowed it to be more cohesive because you were able to understand Louise’s thought process and why “you,” as her child, were important to her accomplishments during the translation process (& it made the story sadder because she was reminiscing “your” life). As for the immediate and long-term conflict for the short story; I thought that the long-term conflict was Louise trying to cope with “your” death by reminiscing on the times you were alive. As for the immediate conflict, it was trying to understand the purpose of the heptapods’ visitation and trying to decipher their language.
ReplyDeleteIt ends with Louise explaining that the heptapods’ language consists of events happening simultaneously and I think it is such a great way to tie the story together because Louise does just that—tells the story of “your” life in accordance to hers in one continuative narrative. The continuity in the story makes it more cohesive and “real” despite having aliens (real in terms of emotions).
I agree that the long term conflict has to do with the death of her daughter. She is thinking about all of their memories in order to cope with the loss that she is feeling.
DeleteI agree with your point regarding Louise experiencing life as a continuous and simultaneous flow. It wasn't clear until the end, initially I had interpreted the breaks as the interaction with the aliens being the past and the stories of her daughter being a little further into the future.
DeleteI agree with many point that you said, the first one being that the story was completely unexpected and took a turn. Also I like how you mentioned that the transitions made the story more cohesive and easier to understand.
DeleteThis story was very interesting and not at all what I was expecting. When it first started out, the narrator was speaking to her child about the night that she and her father decided to conceive her. However, when she stated that her child would never get the chance to have that conversation with her, I knew that it was going to be different from what I was expecting. It took a turn when the narrator began to speak about the alien visitation. The author is very descriptive when it comes to this whole process and her meetings. The descriptions of the aliens are also intertwined with descriptions of her daughter, I was immediately interested to see how the two were going to connect eventually. It gets a bit confusing because the events that she is describing are not in order, so sometimes it is hard to put them together. But I think that this was done on purpose and it adds another element of mystery to the story. It also makes much more sense when it is explained through the aliens. Throughout the entire story, Louise is trying to cope with her daughter’s death and trying to figure out how she is supposed to live her life without her. It seems as if the order of the stories is a metaphor for the way that her mind is now that she has lost her child. She is lost and confused, and everything in her head is a jumbled mess.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and I think a perfect metaphor for her life being a jumbled mess is around pages 13 or 14 when she is first figuring out their writing language. At first it seems like nonsense, but with a little digging and determination, she will be able to find out what her path is, much life she figured out what the aliens were writing.
DeleteThis story is unlike any story I have read before. While it has a non-linear timeline, it does at the same time. To me, it almost seems like the narrator is talking to her daughter’s grave stone, going back and forth between her daughter’s life and her work. The speaker is trying to talk to her daughter about her fondest memories in the hope that is will make her or the aliens come back and give her life meaning again. For me, I don’t know what was harder for the speaker; losing her daughter or the heptapods. While it is clear she loved her daughter very much, she was deeply invested in learning as much about the heptapods as she could. After a while, learning the heptapods wasn’t just a job anymore, it was a way of life. She invested her heart and her soul into these creatures, she became emotionally attached to these creatures. To her, they were like her other children. When they left, so did her marriage, and once that was gone, all she had left was her daughter. Now her daughter is gone and she does not know what she will do with her life. For her, the best way to cope with everything is to look back on what she had accomplished both personally and professionally. She communicated with aliens! But to her, she wasn’t talking with a mythical creature, she was talking with real life, she does not see it as something especially note-worthy, she just simply sees it as a part of her life.
ReplyDelete-Kyle Post
I like your idea of the author maybe talking to a grave, like she's trying to keep the memory of her daughter alive by having a one-way conversation. I agree with your statement about the author not knowing what to do with her life after everyone leaves and I think that's what maybe prompts her to start talking to her daughter.
Delete-Kasey Mentzer
When I read the story, I got the sense that the two narratives were somehow connected, but I wasn't exactly sure how. You have a good way of putting the two together in a way that makes sense. I like how you can see the connection between the daughter and the aliens, and what the two things mean to the narrator and her life.
Delete-Courtney Swarthout
The idea that the narrator could be talking to her daughters grave stone is very interesting. I agree that losing both her daughter and heptopods was very hard for her because they were two things that she was deeply invested in. I like how you connected the heptapods to everything in her life falling apart.
DeleteAs I was reading, I felt the connection between the daughter and aliens as well! This was such a unique piece of writing. There's a lot to it. The more you read it, the better understanding you get from it. I thought it was interesting how you said "she just simply sees it as a part of her life."
DeleteDefinitely! I didn't think much about how she "loved" the aliens like her daughter, but what you wrote definitely puts things into a new perspective.
DeleteThe way the author jumped from talking about the aliens to talking about her daughter was confusing. It seemed as though there were two different stories being written and merged together. Both stories were interesting and drew me in, though I would’ve liked to read one and then the other, not both at the same time. The vague mentioning of never going to get the chance to talk about kids with her daughter is what initially drew me in, it made me wonder what happened. Reading on I was expecting a continuation of the story already read but the shift to talking about aliens was abrupt and confusing. Because there are two stories, there are different tensions associated with either. The long-term tension for the story about the author’s daughter isn’t clear, while the long-term tension for the situation with the aliens is a little more obvious. I think learning the language of the aliens can be both short-term and long-term tension. Each interaction with the aliens is trying to learn something new about the language with the overarching goal of finding out why they are on our planet and what they want and how they got to Earth. The author’s use of second person pronouns, when addressing the reader was confusing at first, I didn’t know who she was talking to. Looking back at the title, the use of your, gives an insight or prediction to why the author is using second person. The author’s use of second person pronouns makes it seem as though she is writing in a diary, or something similar.
ReplyDelete-Kasey Mentzer
I didn't think it was too confusing. There were a couple times in which i had to reread a few sections to better understand what was happening. However, i do agree that the story-part dealing with the alien was more clear than the one dealing with the daughter.
Delete-Deontre Youmans
I agree, I thought it was pretty confusing at first when she used second person pronouns and we didn't know who she was referring to. I also agree that the mentioning of her never getting the chance to talk about kids with her daughter was interesting and what kind of made me want to continue reading.
DeleteI agree that it may have been confusing to follow at the beginning but I think that if you separated the two stories then neither would work well or be as interesting. I like how you pointed out the different spots with tension.
DeleteThis piece was very enjoyable and intriguing to read. It didn’t follow your typical chronological story structure. The author wrote it in different little segments and jumped from each one, slowly bringing the story together as a whole. It starts with the mother seemingly talking to her daughter and telling her about the night she was conceived. Also, throughout the entire story, the narrator seems to be talking to her daughter, using the word, “you” and “your”. On page 2, we get introduced to the fact that there are aliens in the story. I felt the piece was perfectly detailed in showing the interactions with the narrator and the alien. When I first read that part, I initially felt that it was not needed and made the story more confusing. However, as I read on, I started to see the aliens were being sort of compared to the narrator’s daughter and provided another element to the story and to the narrator’s life. Also towards the beginning of this piece, it’s revealed that the daughter is actually dead, and the narrator may not be speaking with her daughter directly, but instead speaking to her ‘spiritually” (not spiritually in the sense of talking to her actual spirit, but just the memory of her). I think the idea of revealing the daughter’s death toward the beginning of the piece was a good one because it allowed for a better understanding the narrator’s feelings throughout the story. She lost her daughter and the aliens left, leaving her trying to figure out how to live her life.
ReplyDelete-Deontre Youmans
I agree! At the beginning of the story, I was very curious to see how the aliens would tie in with the story of the narrator's daughter's life. It was definitely a weird, interesting twist, however, I came to enjoy it by the end of the story. I think the author did a nice job of using descriptive details to describe the connection between the two situations which made it easier for thee reader to understand.
DeleteThis story was actually very interesting to read. When I saw the length of it, I thought it was going to be very hard to read, but it was pretty interesting and intriguing. Since the author wrote in separate pieces that all tied together to bring the story as one it made it interesting to follow, and it was not too confusing. The author spoke to her daughter and referred to her as "you" as if she was talking to the reader. We find out that the daughter is not actually living so I didn't know if the narrator was speaking to the daughter's grave or what exactly she was trying to achieve by referring to the daughter as "you." If the author wouldn't have revealed that the daughter had died then I think I would have been very confused. When the author brought up aliens, I didn't know what to expect. She gave good details about the aliens and how the characters interacted with the aliens. It seemed as though the daughter was being compared to the aliens like they served as a symbol or something. I feel like she uses the story of the aliens to cope with her daughter's death. The title is "Story of your life," so maybe there is a correlation of the author using second person pronouns because she speaks to her daughter throughout the story. Each interaction the author talked about with the aliens, she tried to learn something new about them. I think the story relates to real life, except for the aliens, but if they were real it is like having something to help you cope with the death of a person that was close to you.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete“Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang tells a great story. There are two different stories being told. One of the stories is the author’s attempt to communicate with aliens, while the other part of the story is the author talking about the daughter’s life. The twist of the story is that the mother knows the entire path of the daughter’s life before she is even born. This creates a powerful story because the mother has to deal with knowing what will happen to her daughter in her life. One might think this would take all of the suspension out of the story because she knows what happens but the situation of her mother knowing creates this idea that the daughter’s life is impossible and actually builds the suspension. The author does a nice of using descriptive language when talking about making connections with the aliens. I thought this story was very creative, however, I did not like how the mother had to deal with knowing what the daughter was going to go up against in life. It was very hard for me to know throughout the story that she was going to lose her daughter in the end. On another note, it was interesting to me at the beginning to try to understand the connection between the aliens and the story of her daughter. Of course, neither topics were similar, but the way they came together in the end was quite different than many other stories I have ever read.
I have to say that I really like the structure of the story. The narrator was telling two separate stories that were able to come together. One about her trying to learn about the heptapods, and another story about her daughter. We get glimpses of moments the narrator had with her daughter. The first person point of view and use of dialogue really drew me into the narrative, by keeping the piece interesting and engaging. I think this can be a tricky way to write, but the author did a good job of making it clear to follow; I didn’t find it confusing or difficult to understand. He structured the two plots in distinct paragraphs, and when talking about the daughter, he started the new paragraph with how old she was at the time. The introductions to those paragraphs were a good use of repetition. One criticism I have of the piece however, is that it didn’t feel entirely original, which is something I think we try to stress to people when they write; don’t use clichés, and don’t say something that has been said before or overused to the point that it lacks meaning. I saw many parallels between this story and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. The flipping between two narratives, the aliens, and the concept of experiencing time and events all at once, were all similar. When talking about the heptapods, Chiang says “They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying the all.” This was one of the main themes expressed in Slaughterhouse Five. With respect to the genre, the author put an interesting twist on science fiction by combining it with more realistic fiction.
ReplyDelete-Courtney Swarthout
This story was so far one of my favorites. The author did not write it in a typical chronological fashion and somehow managed to weave two completely different stories together. I thought the stories about the aliens and her daughter were interwoven very nicely because It is almost as if overtime Dr. Banks discovered something new about the aliens, something dragged her back in time and brought her to the memories of her daughter. It displayed the importance of time in the book. It takes time and patience to understand the aliens and for some reason I think certain actions of the aliens reminded her of her daughter. The author also probably wrote the story out of chronological order to display how the heptopods see time simultaneously and humans cannot. The heptopods know exactly how a conversation is going to go similar to how Dr. Banks actually knows her daughter's fate and tells the reader it in the beginning by saying "I’d love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you’re conceived, but the right time to do that would be when you’re ready to have children of your own, and we’ll never get that chance.” That was a very cool way to incorporate the stories fictional characters way of thinking into the stories structure. The story has a profound effect on the way people think about love, time, and freedom. We do not have all the time in the world to love the people we want to be with. Life is short and limited and the heptopods knew that because they knew the future in a sense, which sort of changed and shaped Dr. Banks perception of the world.
ReplyDeleteThis was one of my favorites that we've read, too. I like how you specifically said "something dragged her back in time" when you were talking about how the individual parts of the two different stories were connected because throughout almost the whole thing I had the impression that chronologically, she got into the research of the heptapods after her daughter died, like you say, but I realized at the end the true timeline, which is opposite.
DeleteI really like the way you ended you analysis. I think the heptopods definitely changed doctor banks's perception of the world and how she thought about love, time, and freedom.
DeleteI actually really liked this story. There’s something about how the story is partially written in second person is intriguing to me. I also really loved how it kept going back and forth between telling her daughter a story about her/a part of her life and telling stories of parts of her research with the aliens. The main thing that I loved about it was how most of the time she’d tell a story about her research and their would be corresponding story about her daughter that would deal with the same principle as something she learned or talked about in the research. One of the clearest examples for me was when she told Gary that patience was a virtue, and the next story she told her daughter that sometimes waiting makes the ending even better. It honestly made me feel good about myself to connect the stories like that. Then as the whole story got closer to the end, I could see how the whole thing came together and it just all clicked in my mind. I love finding connections within stories. The ending still confused me a little bit, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Maybe it’s just too late at night for me to process something simple or maybe it was meant to be a little confusing and possibly have multiple meanings. A lot of good stories have endings like that too. I was overall pleasantly surprised by this story, because I’m normally not all that big on reading science fiction that deals with like aliens and stuff, but I think the writing style and structure of the story made this one very appealing.
ReplyDelete“Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang was quite interesting to me. By “interesting” I mean that I did not expect aliens and heptapods to be mentioned in this piece. It starts off with how the father and the speaker are discussing about conceiving a child, and ends with how the speaker wanting to make a baby, and you can tell she is excited with the words, “And I smile, and answer, yes" (page 39, last paragraph). There is a reason why aliens were mentioned. You can see how the author wants to see the relations between the aliens and the daughter. The descriptive details in this piece makes it more unique and adds variety to it. The time occurrences/events mentioned in this piece took me a bit long to put it together. I had to reread some things a couple of times because I was not sure what and which took place first. The daughter dying was very tragic and difficult for Louise to cope with. I could feel how she was feeling. She lost many things in life, and it may seem funny or a ridicule to others that she was able to communicate and put so much energy into these aliens, but it meant a lot to her. That is also something unique that I have not ever seen in a piece of writing. At the same time I feel as if she did that because she used these aliens as a way for her to cope with all the down parts in her life that occurred, like a coping mechanism.
ReplyDeleteMy initial expectations of this story was that it was going to be a hard one to get through. Not just because of the length of it but, also because the title, “A Story of Your Life”, didn’t intrigue me and gave me the wrong idea. I believed it was going to be an author talking about his or her own life and saying that we as the readers had experienced the exact same thing. I quickly learned that these expectations were wrong. The structure of the story revolved around different times in the authors life and “your” life, they weaved in and out. At first I found this confusing but I caught on and I believe it worked really effectively. The different stories while often seemed unconnected are brought together by common factors, the author feels accomplished in what she has done with the aliens and her daughter as well as the author lost them both. I felt as if she is “talking” to her daughter in order to cope with her daughter’s death and she is talking to her about the aliens in order to cope with their departure. Something that intrigued me was how the author referred to the readers in her story. The author puts the reader as her daughter, calling the reader “you”, making us part of the story. I think there could be a connection of how the author describes communicating to the aliens and how she communicates to us, the readers. She had to learn to communicate with the aliens at first by using second person pronouns and telling them what she wanted the aliens to say. In a way she communicated to the reader in the same way, telling us the actions that we have already done.
ReplyDelete“Story of Your Life,” by Ted Chiang was a big surprise to me as a reader as it broke the elements of what I expected from it. The inclusion of a wow factor is what really changed my thoughts about the whole story. The implementations of aliens and hepta pods changed the story ever so much. What was also really interesting was how Ted Chiang brought together two different stories into one to create one quite interesting one. Even with the interwoven stories nothing felt hard to keep up with and nothing felt that interesting. The story seemed to be interesting to me as well since the daughter by which the narrator was speaking too was not even alive but instead dead and the narrator was speaking to the daughter spiritually. It also feels as if the narrator does not know what to do with her life and that is why she seeks the one way conversation with her daughter. This whole realization that her daughter is dead seems to hit the narrator hard and as a coping mechanism and as a way to represent her constantly roaming thoughts is why the story itself has two aspects to it the aliens and the hepta pods. The ending ties in to the parallelism of the story with the aspects of which she believed her life was going. As everything felt to be continuous and happening at once. Even with the stress of her daughter everything felt to be happening at once.
ReplyDelete-Darren De La Cruz
“The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang is definitely my favorite story we have read so far. The most interesting part of this story for me was how the author constructed it. It seemed to be written almost as two completely different stories that somehow became one. Although the story was not written in chronological order, time was a major part in the events that were described. Doctor banks kept going back and forth in time between a time where she was researching aliens who were complex and took lots of effort to understand and stories about her own daughter. I think the thing that connected these two timelines and storylines was the fact that, in some way, certain aspects of the aliens reminded Dr. Banks of her daughter. The blocking of the story into two distinct timelines was an intentional nod towards now the Heptopods (aliens) perceive time which was described as experiencing “ all events at once.” The purposeful mirroring of this aspect of the Heptopods was easy to follow, as well as interesting and intriguing to me. It showed now talented the author was as this is a very hard thing to accomplish. He did a very good job of keeping the two story lines very separate, yet so intertwined all at the same time. It was a sad reality that Dr. Banks had to deal with the fact that she knew that her daughter was going to die. The title “The Story of Your Life” became a very fitting title as the reader learns of the daughters fate.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Madeleine about how interesting the was the story was written. It was as if the author inertwined two completely different stories and made it one flowing, complex narration.
Delete-Victoria Dumornay
“The Story Of Your Life” works in a multitude of ways. One of the things that intrigued me the most about the passage was its usage of time. Much like the Heptapods, the story flowed in a nonsensical path with multiple events happening at roughly the same time. However, this wasn’t really clear until the end of the passage; in a way the passage sort of takes place in the present, future, and past all at the same time, much like how the Heptapods experience reality and now Louise. Another particularity of the story that I noted was how Louise seemed to see her daughter as one of these aliens as well. Not in the way that she was from another planet, but rather she was a difficult, complex, and stubborn being that was hard to read; she very much resembled the written language of the Heptapods. This can also be seen in the abruptness of the aliens departure, there was little to no warning much like Louise’s daughters death; there were only ever simple tell tale signs of her daughters future otherwise it was a complete blindside. One question that arose however, was Louise had mentioned how after spending her time with the Heptapods and learning their ways of communication she developed a sixth sense into not necessarily being able to see the future, but visualize certain timelines, so I wondered if possibly she had already known of her daughters death even before her daughter was born. While “The Story Of Your Life” took a science fiction approach with the use of the aliens, I felt that it was more about a story that focused on understanding the linguistic and science of an unknown culture.
ReplyDeleteI really like your comparison between the daughter and the aliens. I feel like that was an interesting twist in the story.
Delete“The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang took me by surprise, as there were many events that were unexpected. The unforeseen events kept me interested throughout the passage and made me want to keep reading. To me it seemed as if the author was writing two separate stories but somehow, he brought them together, which I believe was a good tactic because it made me more engaged with the two separate stories. The two stories seemed to be Banks’ examination of the aliens’ language and her joyful/sad memories of her daughter. The story shifts between perspectives from the past, present, and future. I thought it was interesting how the passage started with the narrator addressing her daughter as Dr. Banks, from the present, and describes a key point in her life, the moment of decision that led to her daughter’s conception. I also enjoy how the story shifts to the past as Dr. Banks talks about investigating the arrival of aliens on Earth. Chiang’s structure of how he tells the story reflected the concept of perceiving everything simultaneously. When Louise believes that the heptapods have a different conception of time then we do, like humans can not predict the future but heptapods can perceive all the moments of time simultaneously, I feel that is an important part of the story and provides a reason for the layout and structure of how the author wrote this story. I like how Chiang describes Louise’s experiences of learning the heptapods languages, and how she is affected by the new languages.
ReplyDelete-Alyssa Mahadai
Totally agree, the story was a huge shock to me aswell. However, i was thoroughly pleased with the story
DeleteThis story was quite the read for me and ultimately was filled with a multitude of surprises. Time was a very integral part of the story, and as the story progressed, I could see the wide range of developments in the central character. What was more interesting besides the character development however was the usage of the split stories. This is something that I had never read before, and I was very much intrigued by the was that it was implemented. The non linear flow of the story was also very interesting because there were multiple scenarios all occurring in a relatively short time frame. The research that the doctor performed on the aliens was definitely my favorite timeline, and it was interesting to see how that timeline was related to the one where his daughter is a part of. The doctor studies these aliens, and in a way, they remind him of his own daughter, bridging the gap between the stories. This sci-fi story and the futuristic concept of time travel are interconnected to the passages main thematic element of Time. the aliens have a way better understanding of time in this universe, and its interesting to see how their usage of time and time travel, help build character development by visiting scenes from the past. The relationship that the doctor has with time is similar to that of the aliens, because he knows exactly what is to become of her daughter at every possible moment. In the end, I believe Dr, Banks is caught up in the whole issue of time, because in the end, some things are better not to be known.
ReplyDelete“The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang was overall a very surprising short story, and definitely not what I was expecting when I first started reading it. One factor that I thought was very interesting about “The Story of Your Life” was how the title made you mentally picture a very simple story about a life, when instead it was much more complicated than that. The short story was mainly a mixture of nonfiction and science fiction, which I thought definitely put a twist on things. For example, although the story was talking about very realistic things, such as a couple making love and conceiving a child, it still had some science fiction in it, such as aliens visiting the family and interacting with them. This kind of jumping from different types of themes and settings continued on throughout majority of “The Story of your Life”. However, this type of writing style did end up confusing me from time to time. There were moments where I had to go back and reread something in order to get a better understanding of it. Despite that, the short story was definitely unique. The narrator was talking to her daughter, but there were parts where it seemed like she was physically talking to her. Instead, it was as if the mother was talking to her memory, so to say. Also, I thought it was quite interesting that she was retelling these unique and sometimes unrealistic stories and events that happened in her life, as if they were completely normal.
ReplyDelete-Victoria Dumornay