Reading: Story of Your Life

Story of Your Life

– What a new language can bring

Basically, this story is talking about a kind of alien heptapod that come to the earth and begin communication with human. And as in every science fiction film, the first thing that humans need to figure out is in what way we can communicate with them. This story mostly focuses on the progress of how humans try to read the heptapods’ language and written words, which is also the most interesting part of this story.

The language system of the heptapod is similar to human. They also have a system of talking and a system of writing. The most interesting part happened in the writing system. The protagonist “I” is an expert, especially researching the language of heptapod. She surprisingly found that the symbols that the heptapod write down are complete sentences, maintaining all the factors that a sentence needs. But the most important point is, the symbols are written in one stroke, which means the heptapods have already known what they want to communicate before writing. In this situation, the writing becomes a ceremony of completing the action, but not the part of the action. The protagonist then knows that the heptapods have already known what will happen next, but they still continue the writing, until everything comes to the doomed result.

The part that impressed me the most is here. After the protagonist figured out the heptapods’ language, she started to use it frequently. And as time went by, the protagonist found that she started to change the way she used to think. She started to think about how the thing will happen, and what the result will be after she does something. She mentioned that the language she used could completely change her thinking ways. This spot makes me think of how our thinking ways developed. What thing would change if we are using a completely different language environment? For example, in the Three-Body written by Cixin Liu, the people from the three-body don’t know the meanings of cheating and hiding, for their language is not used in talking to others, but showing to others. What they are thinking about will transfer directedly into language. And during the communication with the earth, the three-body people gradually learned how to cheat. According to these, I start to think, what is our language bring to us? What is the advantages and weakness of the thinking ways of human? Is there such a big difference even between two different kinds of languages, such as Chinese and English?

And I think the answer is: yes. Although I’m not an expert in English, I still found that, after one year studying in NYUSH, I started to use the adverbs in front of the whole sentence, just like “Frequently, I eat in the cafeteria”. But in Chinese, we would say “I frequently eat in the cafeteria”. Also, the grammar of English is more accurate than Chinese. We don’t pay much attention to the single or plural number in Chinese, but we do it in English, which may also bring some different ways of thinking.

I found it very interesting, for I used to think that people’s thinking ways depended on what they have encountered, what education they have been through. But this story told me that people’s thinking way may be doomed as they have born. The first language they have learned may be the most frequent thinking way they may use. This then becomes a theory of “the result is doomed”, which is also what the heptapods tell us in the story.

In the fiction, the author also writes the protagonist’s daughter’s life story in turn with the story of heptapods. At the end of the fiction, it writes that “Would I start your life story if I already know the result?” I think that is what everyone should think about. Is the result more important? Or the process?