Author Alan Bloch, in his short story “Men Are Different,” projects a view of a dystopian world where humans are extinct. Initially it seems as if a robot just wants to understand more about humans. Though, a closer look reveals the consequences of acting without knowledge. Bloch’s purpose for writing this story is to raise awareness for mental illness, and show the effects we have on the mentally ill when we act without knowledge.
Initially we don’t know if this is a girl not knowing about her boyfriend, or a dramatic fiction set in another universe. The first clue is presented by the narrator very quickly, “What made men different from us-- by digging around on the dead planets”(Bloch 1). After this we question if the people wanting to know …show more content…
The speaker claims to be an archaeologist, they start off by saying “I wonder if we’ll ever find out about Men...by digging around on dead planets”(Bloch 1). The subject is something we know little about, mental illness. We know little about this because it is in someone else's head, and someone's thoughts and feeling are almost impossible to understand. Dead planets are the deceased’s brains, we can disect and learn everything about how the brain functions and the structure of it, but that will never lead to us understanding what emotions and thoughts people have. Some times we do not even know someone is affected by a mental illness, the narrator states this too,“The skeleton of a Man, is to be sure, almost the same as the skeleton, except it’s made of some calcium compound instead of titanium” (Bloch 1). We do not even know these people are different, just by sight alone. To know they must share their experiences, thoughts, and feeling with us, and those cannot be shared under a microscope on an autopsy table. We are the same, but different on the inside; and some people are treated on the basis of being different. The narrator states “I opened him up he wasn’t the same inside. And when I put him back together I couldn’t get him running again” (Bloch 2). He wasn’t the same on the inside, not only because he thought differently, but because he was treated
Initially we don’t know if this is a girl not knowing about her boyfriend, or a dramatic fiction set in another universe. The first clue is presented by the narrator very quickly, “What made men different from us-- by digging around on the dead planets”(Bloch 1). After this we question if the people wanting to know …show more content…
The speaker claims to be an archaeologist, they start off by saying “I wonder if we’ll ever find out about Men...by digging around on dead planets”(Bloch 1). The subject is something we know little about, mental illness. We know little about this because it is in someone else's head, and someone's thoughts and feeling are almost impossible to understand. Dead planets are the deceased’s brains, we can disect and learn everything about how the brain functions and the structure of it, but that will never lead to us understanding what emotions and thoughts people have. Some times we do not even know someone is affected by a mental illness, the narrator states this too,“The skeleton of a Man, is to be sure, almost the same as the skeleton, except it’s made of some calcium compound instead of titanium” (Bloch 1). We do not even know these people are different, just by sight alone. To know they must share their experiences, thoughts, and feeling with us, and those cannot be shared under a microscope on an autopsy table. We are the same, but different on the inside; and some people are treated on the basis of being different. The narrator states “I opened him up he wasn’t the same inside. And when I put him back together I couldn’t get him running again” (Bloch 2). He wasn’t the same on the inside, not only because he thought differently, but because he was treated