Ted Chiang’s story is engrossing and keeps the reader constantly thinking as if the text was a puzzle. As I was reading, I was confused about the time switches, however, toward the end, everything clicked. By learning the Heptapod’s language, Louise was able to see her future all at once, starting at the beginning but knowing the end.
In Heptapod A, the alien’s spoken language, “the noun has a case marker indicating whether it’s a subject or object” (Chiang 14). Marking allows Louise to learn the spoken language easier as the information is clearer.
The alien’s writing, Heptapod B, is what led things be to interesting. Their nouns were “identified as a subject or object based on the orientation of its logogram relative to that of the verb” meaning they seemed to have “all its computations at the very beginning” for writing (Chiang 14, 24).
Heptapod B was the key to the thinking process of the aliens, as Louise was able to decipher from their writing order, that they already knew what they were going to write ahead of time. They wrote in a way that seemed they were always one step ahead which allowed Louise to realize that the aliens experience the past, present, and future all at once. Because humans can’t see all this information all at once, we write in sequential order, like cause and effect, which differs from the aliens who write as a whole. They’re writing is complete whereas human writing has no definite end.
The orientation of the writing was also very different from modern human writing. The aliens wrote in artistic writing, like the way humans write music notes and mathematical representations. In my imagination, this kind of writing reminds me of Mayan writing which overall looks more like a drawing rather than words.
Differing physical structures also brought about another communicative obstacle between the aliens and the humans. The aliens spoke in a way that the “human vocal tract can’t reproduce, and maybe sounds that the human ear can’t distinguish” (3).
This line makes me ponder about our learning processes. There are thousands of languages in the world, however, we can recognize them as a language and even learn how to use them later. However, this alien’s language required a different set of body parts in order to learn the spoken language. This was like a pre-determined obstacle that heavily restricted the communications between the aliens and humans, as they were built too differently.
Because humans share similar bone orientations, we ourselves are able to relay signals without words by reenacting actions that all signify a specific feeling. For example, whenever humans are in pain, we tend to crumble up our bodies, we may frown or curl up, and if we are happy, we open up our body language, by smiling or sitting in comfortable poses. On the other hand, because the aliens are built differently with seven eyes and seven limbs, we aren’t able to share normal body language. Our way of using our body to signify pain may not be their way of signifying pain.
Overall, learning an alien language reminds me of learning a foreign language to a certain extent. In English, our grammatical structures are different from Chinese, and in Chinese, there is even a specific stroke order whereas, in English, there isn’t. We can’t use the rules for one language and copy them directly to another.
In the end, learning this language, enabled Louise to acquire another perspective. This is interesting as she was able to see everything that would happen in the future, happiness, and pain, yet in the end, she still chose to go through everything bravely. Instead of changing her choices to maybe have another ending, one where she doesn’t go through a divorce or see her daughter die in a car crash at the young age of 25, she chooses to walk the storyline accordingly. Would you do the same?