The Story of Your Life – Notes

  • In the short story, Louise Banks, a linguist, figures out an alien (heptapods) writing language and now can see the future
    • The story is told through first person POV and is interspersed with past/future scenes
      • The way the story is told matches the description of heptapod language/perception
  • The person whose life is being told is Louise’s unborn daughter
    • We learn about her growing up and of her eventual death at age 25
    • On reread, the first dialogue Louise says to her daughter while ironic, could be a reference to future sight
    • The story covers the daughter’s day of conception and death within the first few pages: again, the simultaneous perception of her life
  • Heptapods see time as simultaneous rather than sequential >> their writing system reflects that >> people who learn the language also begin to see reality in this simultaneous perspective
    • Heptapods’ physiology reflects this: since they have eyes/legs on all sides, they don’t have a sense of forward or backward
  • Speech and writing isn’t correlated, in usual human languages speech comes first, then a writing system is based around that, for heptapods, they understand everything first, and then speak to actualize their understanding
    • Heptapods writing is logographic, since it uses characters rather than an alphabet, but Banks later calls it semagraphic because it turns out they don’t correlate to heptapods’ spoken language
  • Banks doesn’t break from the future she sees, she and all others who can perceive time simultaneously play out their futures as though in a play
    • She considers her daughter’s future life before going to conceive her

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