Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Humanity in Windup Girl
One thing that has struck me so far in Windup Girl is the loss of humanity that seems to accompany this futuristic world lost in destruction. It would seem that, naturally, if the world was in despair that it would be natural to redeem yourself in order to better humanity. But this novel demonstrates the integrity of humanity diminishing in more ways than one. For example, the creation of Emiko and other windups seems to be an exceptional invention and accomplishment, but the use of the windups for pleasure at their expense is wrong and diminishes the accomplishment of creating them. Furthermore, the use of animals to power machines seems to resort back in time, as if the farther humanity pushed forward, the farther they go back. Also, the prejudice among ethnicities seems to also be a problem, even more so than earlier in history. Therefore, it seems that there is a loss of humanity as the world tries to keep pushing forward.
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I think it's interesting that so much science fiction uses the idea that with so much technological innovation comes technological regression too. I think it was Weep for Day that was obviously set in a much more futuristic society, and yet they still had knight errants to fight off the nightmares. It seems like such a strange contrast to me and I'm not even sure why it so often presented in SF. What is the greater theme behind it?
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