{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6729", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 6729, "subject": "Short Story 208*: Unrequited Love", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2015-04-22T16:08:54+00:00", "last": "2015-04-22T16:08:54+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2015-04-22T16:08:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 208*: Unrequited Love", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "UNREQUITED LOVE\n\n\n “Unrequited Love” first appeared in *Subterranean Press Magazine* in their\nSummer 2007 edition. It has not been collected.\n\n\n SUMMARY:\n\nThe story begins with an epigraph from Shakespeare's “Sonnet 144”: “Two\nloves I have of comfort and despair”. Our narrator claims that in the hopes\nof doing good, he has in fact quite innocently done wrong. “There are\nmillions like me in that, and most acknowledge no smallest trace of guilt —\nSoon, one hopes, a great, blood-colored hand whose fingers are tipped with\nclaws will close about them and drag them down to Hell.”\n\nHe claims that it is results that matter, and he has brought pain to\ninnocent hearts.\n\nThe narrator describes how he met the robotic girl Roberta, adopted by the\nRobinsons because they “could not have a child of their own, or were\nunwilling to undertake the travail and expense of a real child.” One\nmorning as the artificial Roberta walks to school, he asks her if she likes\nschool and what they are studying. In addition to school topics, she\nmentions, “Stranger danger.” As her next door neighbor, he assures her he\nis no stranger.\n\nHe asks what she would get if black and white were mixed, and she responds,\n“Grey if you mean paint. Brown if you mean people.” Proceeding to ask the\nsquare root of 256, she answers and replies, “Only that's not fair. It's\nnot first-grade work.” Roberta indicates that there are more boys than\ngirls in school, and that she enjoys tutoring the most because it truly\nhelps the teacher, Mrs. Morse, though she enjoys tutoring girls more.\n\nLater, the narrator meets Julianne, a fellow student of Roberta's. In her\nmumbling, sad way, she admits that she plays with Roberta and that her\nfather is a cook. Upon mentioning to her parents that Roberta is going to\nbe getting a puppy, they agree to get her one as well. The narrator quotes\nByron's epitaph to his dog Boatswain which begins “Beauty without vanity\n...” and asks which breed she will be getting. “A robot. Roberta's going to\nget a border terrier, though,” she says, hoping that the dogs will play\ntogether as the children do. The narrator is “filled with a tragic anger”\nas he walks on, and the gently curving streets and the partially artificial\ngrass offend him. “I hated every house I saw; their fresh pain and absurd\nmixture of styles more than sufficient to account for any amount of\nhatred.” He reveals that his true anger is because almost none of the\nhouses hold two children, and most housed none, like his own.\n\nHe remarks, ?My kind had built a paradise, of which I was a part. A\nparadise for machines, in which the human race, though welcome, could not\nand did not thrive. In and around the filthy huts of the medieval peasants,\nchildren ran and shouted, laughed and wept, and no doubt received sturdy\nbuffets when they made too much noise. There the family sang around a table\nwe would scorn. There grandmothers recounted wild tales before the fire,\ntales full of bold boys who made good and honest country maidens who\ntricked evil dwarves like me. Tales that were full of life because the\nchildren were, and full of death, too, because each child had to learn that\ndeath is life's shadow.\n\nHe watches the girls as a week passes, remarking upon Roberta's perfection\nand the unnatural sound of Julianne's laugh, which he hears once. He sees\nRoberta get her dog, and a week or two later Julianne gets hers, a larger\n“caricature of a Dalmatian”. He notes that Roberta's puppy plays with it as\nhe might a ball or another object. He thinks of a plan and, when Roberta's\npuppy penetrates the hedge that separates his house from hers, tempts it\nwith scraps of meat. When he returns the dog to the girls, he asks, “Have\nyou two ever though of trading puppies for a few days?” He makes up a story\nabout doing something similar as a child, and Roberta asks if Julianne\ncould give up Robber for a week if she relinquishes the real dog, Rover.\n\nThe next day, he sees that Julianne has the robotic Robber once again,\nsaying that she likes him better, offering only that he doesn't mess the\ncarpet. Later, he confronts the artificial girl Roberta directly, and she\nreveals that both girls were crying over recess and she reveals that\n“Robber thinks he's a real dog.” Her words “held a world of agony.”\n\nRoberta says, “He's — he's a *thing,* but he thinks he's a real dog,”\nbefore she runs into her house.\n\nHe soon sees Dan and Tamara Robinson out looking for their dog, and on a\nhunch he finds out Julianne's address to find Rover, “lying quietly by the\nside of the house, half hidden by shrubbery, under a window that I would\nguess was that of Julianne's bedroom.”\n\n“God forgive me! I picked him up and carried him home,” reveals the\nnarrator. The next day he sees that Robber has come to wait for Roberta on\nher way to school. “During the weeks that followed, I say him there twice —\nI have never seen him again. Julianne says they keep him chained up.”\n\n\n\n COMMENTARY:\nAs in so many of Wolfe's stories, the thing that most frightens and hurts\nthe human characters is symbolically akin to looking into a mirror:\nJulianne doesn't like Rover because he makes a mess and has biological\nflaws — she knows that her knowledge, capabilities, and even perhaps her\nappearance are inferior to Roberta's. When she has Rover, it makes her\naware of her own natural shortcomings. The narrator notes that the only\ntime he hears her laugh, it is unnatural, and that she mumbles everything,\nclearly signifying a lack of self-confidence. The same reflection pains\nRoberta, in what is surely one of Wolfe's most pathos-filled scenes, as the\nartificial girl condemns Robber for being a “thing” who thinks he is a real\ndog, something which she herself obviously does as well. For all her\ntalents and charm, she will not confront the fact that she is not a “real”\ngirl.\n\nThe narrator himself cannot stand the artificiality of the modern world,\nknowing that it is contrived and that the idyllic memories he has of real\nchildren playing together highlights his sterile loneliness, as he\ndescribes himself as something akin to an evil dwarf without children of\nhis own. While his plans are not entirely altruistic for the children, as\nhe was hoping to teach them a lesson about the joining of the artificial\nand the real, there is no reason to believe that he actually wishes the\ngirls harm or has any kind of sexualized intention for them. It is the\nstory of a lonely old man who resents his society, but in his attempt to\nmake it better, he has opened up the emptiness of modern life to everyone\ninvolved, from the live girl to the robotic dog. The dogs recognize their\npotential masters quite readily on the basis of some instinct, but the\ngirls both shun the dogs because it reveals something about themselves they\ncannot face.\n\nThe idea that humanity has favored increasingly automated systems must\nconcern Wolfe, yet quite clearly the anguish and pity both the girls and\nboth the dogs inspire do not create an impression of true authorial bias\nagainst machines. One further irony is that the human girl imitates the\nmechanical one in getting a dog, but when given the opportunity to own the\noriginal inspiration for her desire, she shuns it. The unreturned love that\nthe dogs feel for those that are most like themselves shows that it is for\nthe most part the sentient creatures with full self-awareness who fear to\nsee themselves as they truly are.\n\nDespite the quite common claims that Wolfe's fiction at times can be\nsexist, the young girls come off quite sympathetically here. In addition,\nthe preponderance of boys in the very small class (5 to 2) might show a\ncultural preference for male children as the only child in a family, and\nthere does seem to be an implied criticism of this bias for masculine\nchildren (this cultural bias can easily be seen in overpopulated countries\nsuch as China, for example, which has actually created a real gender\nimbalance). There is no true textual indication of selective breeding and\nengineering, however. Certainly and obviously, for natural breeding to\nwork, a gender balance is preferable. The small class size further\nemphasizes the relative sterility of this future.\n\n\n\n CULTURAL AND LITERARY ALLUSIONS:\n\n\n In addition to mentioning the famous dog Lassie, the text also mentions\nGrayfriars Bobby, the 19th century Skye Terrier who supposedly sat on his\nmaster's grave for over a decade.\n\nThe text begins with the first lines of Shakespeare's Sonnet 144:\n\n\n Two loves I have of comfort and despair,\n\nWhich like two spirits do suggest me still\n\nThe better angel is a man right fair,\n\nThe worser spirit a woman coloured ill.\n\nTo win me soon to hell, my female evil\n\nTempteth my better angel from my side,\n\nAnd would corrupt my saint to be a devil,\n\nWooing his purity with her foul pride.\n\nAnd, whether that my angel be turn?d fiend,\n\nSuspect I may, yet not directly tell,\n\nBut being both from me both to each friend,\n\nI guess one angel in another’s hell.\n\nYet this shall I ne er know, but live in doubt,\n\nTill my bad angel fire my good one out.\n\n\n Even though the line “the better angel is a man right fair” might be\ntransmuted to a jingoistic attitude favoring natural humanity, the ending\nscene of the robot dog longing for Roberta shows us that it, too, loves\nfully and loyally, and that its love has resulted in the loss of its\nfreedom. The dichotomy between the artificial and natural world is also\nmirrored by our narrator's claims of innocent intentions leading to\ndamnation and hell. His own life, a not-so-subtly disguised disappointment\nfull of despair, seeks to achieve contentment, but in so doing creates even\nmore widespread despair — it is impossible for the narrator, the\ncharacters, and even society to recognize the reality of their situations:\n“whether that my angel be turn'd fiend — but being both from me both to\neach friend, I guess one angel in another's hell.” The mirror which the\nnarrator holds up to the dogs and the girls reveals the emptiness they all\nfeel in the glancing at the truth.\n\nOne final possible reference to Shakespeare's *Titus Andronicus* is in the\nform of Tamara Robinson's first name . Tamara is a wrathful woman in the\nplay, and she allows Titus' daughter to be raped by her sons. In\nretaliation, Titus kills the men, bakes them into a pie, and feeds them to\ntheir mother Tamara. This violent, sad end to both family lines is\nobviously much tempered, as this Wolfe story is devoid of violence, but for\na mother to consume her children shows an awful, unnatural end to a natural\nlineage. This may bear some thematic relationship to the idea that these\nfamily lines are being disrupted in a potentially harmful way.\n\n\n NAMES:\n\n Clearly robots are named as Robber and Roberta are. Dan and Tamara\nRobinson have first names, and while the similarity in sound for their last\nname is suggestive, they are clearly humans, as this joining of artificial\nand organic is the catalyst that offends the narrator and leads him to\nconcoct his experiment.\n\n\n Roberta means “famed, bright, or shining.” The last name Robinson means\n“son of Robin/Robert” (which also means “famed, bright, or shining”).\nHaving human characters with a last name implying the child of a robotic\nname shows the partial subordination of humanity to the mechanized, sterile\nideal. Dan means “God is my judge.” Tamara means a “date palm tree”.\nPerhaps the reference to Shakespeare's *Titus Andronicus* is implied,\ndiscussed above.\n\n\n Julianne can mean “downy grace” and may also be a feminine form of Julian,\nwhich means “youthful”. (Rover means “wanderer”, though it is a generic\nenough name for a dog).\n\n\n CONNECTION TO OTHER WORKS:\n\nWolfe's sympathetic treatment of dogs is well documented, extending back\nthrough *The Book of the New Sun* to more recent stories such as “Dog of\nthe Drops” or “Rattler”. The relationship between man and machines is much\nless problematic in *The Book of the Long Sun*, but there is a strain of\npotential tension chronicled in “Counting Cats in Zanzibar”, “All the Hues\nof Hell”, and other earlier stories. This particular story is filled with\npathos for almost everyone involved, and the sympathetic young female\ncharacters is similar to the treatment of Vivianne in “The Magic Animal”,\nalso published in 2007.\n\n\n RESOURCES:\n\nShakespeare, William. “Sonnet 144”. Shakespeare Online. 2014. Web. 19 March\n2015. http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/144.htmlWolfe, Gene. ?\n\nUnrequited Love?. Subterranean Press Magazine (Summer 2007).\nhttp://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/summer_2007/fiction_unrequited_love_by_gene_wolfe" } ] } ] }