Good poems can be bad for us! Yes, the better they are the deeper the problem we might get into. Using romance, war games, purpose in life, cutting edge technology and drama, Kurt Vonnegut’s presents us, in his short story “EPICAC”, with a man who interacts with an entity yet to be decided whether it is a human being or just a machine and ends up with an unexpected result conflicting with his own goal. Although entertaining and fictitious, the narrative of a mathematician using any weapon at his disposal to achieve his objectives exposes the fragility of our beliefs. By believing in words instead of actions a woman chooses to put her love life into the wrong entity's hands.
Pat is defined as a focused, intelligent, meticulous and decided woman, …show more content…
She does that after two poems and almost no words said to each other after the poems were delivered to her desk "Again I left it tucked under Pat's blotter." (EPICAC 135). The antagonist demonstrates his personality even more profoundly when he provides EPICAC with constraints that make the machine’s purpose impossible to achieve such as “Women can't love machines, and that's that.'" (EPICAC 181) and "'That is the only problem I cannot solve.'" (EPICAC 228), knowing the machine would run indefinitely until that problem is solved. And he perpetrates his final plan by letting it on when he should have turned it off, "I was fired for having left EPICAC on all night" (EPICAC 235) when he knew what would happen in that case "I finally threw the main switch to keep him from burning out." (EPICAC 112); he eliminates the competition and wins Pat's affection, ”'I loved and won - EPICAC loved and lost'" (EPICAC 238), shows his understanding of EPICAC: a war enemy. The narrator seizes opportunities and people's resources, "he cost the taxpayers $776,434,927.54." (EPICAC 2), with no remorse demonstrating that Pat is his most important and maybe the only
Pat is defined as a focused, intelligent, meticulous and decided woman, …show more content…
She does that after two poems and almost no words said to each other after the poems were delivered to her desk "Again I left it tucked under Pat's blotter." (EPICAC 135). The antagonist demonstrates his personality even more profoundly when he provides EPICAC with constraints that make the machine’s purpose impossible to achieve such as “Women can't love machines, and that's that.'" (EPICAC 181) and "'That is the only problem I cannot solve.'" (EPICAC 228), knowing the machine would run indefinitely until that problem is solved. And he perpetrates his final plan by letting it on when he should have turned it off, "I was fired for having left EPICAC on all night" (EPICAC 235) when he knew what would happen in that case "I finally threw the main switch to keep him from burning out." (EPICAC 112); he eliminates the competition and wins Pat's affection, ”'I loved and won - EPICAC loved and lost'" (EPICAC 238), shows his understanding of EPICAC: a war enemy. The narrator seizes opportunities and people's resources, "he cost the taxpayers $776,434,927.54." (EPICAC 2), with no remorse demonstrating that Pat is his most important and maybe the only