“Story of Your Life” tells two primary stories, one about Louise’s encounter with the heptapods, the other about her life with her daughter. What, if anything, connects the two stories? Specifically where and how does that connection take place?
12 thoughts on “Story of Your Life”
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The future is the connection between the two stories; in the story of Louise deciphering how to communicate with the heptapods, we learn how she came about being able to see the future, while in the story addressing her daughter it is about letting the future play out in the way she has seen it. The heptapods have effectively convinced her of the inevitability of the future (“what distinguishes the heptapods’ mode of awareness is… that their motives coincide with history’s purposes. They act to create the future, to enact chronology”) and it is in this moment that Louise decides knowing the future doesn’t change anything and she cannot act contrary to it (“now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know”). This is the moment that truly connects the two stories for me, because we now know why Louise is writing half the story addressed to her daughter, who we also now know she chose to have despite being aware of her imminent young death.
The stories are intertwined, as the language and the heptapods connect the two stories, as the heptapods give Louise the gift of seeing everything in its entirety, and to always be in the present. You think the story is about aliens, and this bizarre encounter with these strange creatures, when all along it’s about the fact that the aliens are much wiser than us, and Louise actually benefits from her work with them, giving her wisdom and a completely new way of thinking. She can go back to her memories as if it was now, and also go forward to those future events as well, and see the day her daughter dies. Her memories are also very vivid, as they are just her life in its entirety. She can see everything that’s going to happen as well. When she’s writing to her daughter, its sounding like she is going back in time, reflecting on her life, writing something after it’s all happened. It’s really hard to know when she writes the letter, yet I believe that she is actually writing about her daughter’s future, and she is writing when her daughter is two years old, based on the second paragraph of the story, as she says “Right now your dad and I have been married for about two years”, and she’s writing about everything that will happen up to the end. It looks like a reflection. People speak and our lives unfold in a linear, chronological fashion. Our language is linear too. Humans can reflect so we are not just stuck thinking about things ahead, yet we don’t really know what’s really going to happen in the future. The heptapods’ “language” is a very unusual language which allows visualizing things as a whole like an entire sentence appearing at once or an entire. Neither story is more important, as they are distractions to get to the real story; that this amazing encounter opened new doors for Louise.
Agreeing with what Jackson and others have said, the language seems to be the true connecting force between the stories. As with our own world, in the story language is the primary form of communication. Once able to engage with and understand the Heptapods language her perspective and understanding of the world is entirely different. Language creates clarity in her memories. She is able to better reflect on the experiences she had with her daughter before her death. Furthermore, her new understanding of language allows her to see into the future. Without an understanding of language these experiences would not be possible because her engagement with narratives both past and future is a byproduct of the language she learns. Language allows for the effective communication of information.
I think what allows the two stories to be connected is the Heptapod B written language. Louise, once becoming proficient in this, admits to it changing the way she thought about the world. She notes, “I have glimpses when heptapod B truly reigns, and I experience past and future all at once; my consciousness becomes a half century long ember burning outside time. I perceive—during those glimpses—that entire epoch as a simultaneity. It’s a period encompassing the rest of my life, and the entirety of yours.” (p36). This quote gives away the fact that Louise can “see into the future”. Though I don’t think she would use that phrase. As much as her human body can, she experiences the whole universe at once, and time loses much of its significance. I believe this is why the narrative may seem a bit jumbled chronologically to us readers: Louise can’t tell what the past, present, or future is, or at least doesn’t think arranging events in chronological order is important for the meaning of this piece. This, in a sense, connects the two stories in Louise’s mind; as they were never separate stories to begin with.
The two stories are connected because they lead to the same place, with that place ultimately being the realization that Louise can see the future and is telling the story of a person not yet born, while also telling the tale of how she became capable of seeing the future. The point that the stories are connected by Gary is interesting to me because the mentioning of “your father” versus “Gary” was not initially what clued me in to the connection between the stories. What first led me to believe that the stories may be connected was that Louise frequently addresses her daughter in the future tense, but says “I remember”. The idea that she remembers something that will happen clues the audience into Louise’s ability to see the future, and the fact that the Heptapods had a nonlinear language and writing system were the first hints to me that the language may have taught Louise to see the future. My realization came with the mentioning of the Heptapods’ different perception of linear writing and of time, and it was confirmed by the reveal of Gary as the father of her child.
Additionally, the idea that the future would not happen as it does without Louise knowing that is how it will happen is interesting to me. As previous comments mention, it would be terrible to know about tragic events in your life before they even happen, and it would be difficult to cope with the inevitability of such events. What is intriguing though is that there is never any mention of Louise trying to change the future whatsoever, nor is there any indication that she wants to try to. Of course she does not want her daughter to die, but there is no description in the story of Louise taking preventative measures regarding the death of her twenty five year old daughter. One thing about the idea of prevention that is curious, however, is that she mentions her dream of her daughter falling off of a cliff as a three year old, so she takes extra caution on the stairs with her young daughter, despite Louise knowing that her daughter will not die until she is well past three years old. Louise knows exactly how her future will go, and never expresses any sort of doubt in her narration of her daughter’s short life, stating “you will” instead of a less positive phrase such as “you might”. Despite knowing that her daughter will die, she voluntarily decides to have a child with Gary– a decision that to me shows that she has accepted the inevitability of her future and wishes to enjoy her daughter as much as she can, even though she knows that her daughter will die young. This I think expresses how much Louise’s life has become nonlinear, just as the Heptapod’s language is, because her memories of losing her child, being with her young child, and deciding to have a child are interwoven, and do not seem to be driven by a desire to change the future.
Louise seems to have been permanently changed, especially in the way she views time after her interactions with the heptapods. It is non-linear and the future seems to have a profound way the she acts in the present. I felt as though the connection between the two stories was her daughter. She seems to be speaking to her daughter while she talks about the experience researching the heptapods, her daughters conception, her life and her death. Each time switch seems to address her daughter. It seems to be an attempt to talk about her daughter’s life starting with when she meets Gary to her death. All events that are mentioned either include her daughter or were forming in her conception and raising. For example all of the heptapod based interactions include either the daughter’s future father or are crucial in changing the way Louise looks at time which had an impact on the way she was able to raise her daughter.
I agree with your point about how Louise’s daughter connects the two stories. After learning the Hetapod B written language, Louise is able to see all of time at once, past, present, and future. In both stories, she is remembering things, either in the past or future, that relate to her daughter. This brings up an interesting dilemma, if you could see the future would it change how you act? Louise doesn’t seem to let her newfound way of thinking, where she can see all-time simultaneously, affect her decisions in the present. Even though she knows her daughter will die young, she still decides to give birth to her.
These two separate narratives are connected by Louise’s husband, Gary Donelly. Until this connection is made, we’re not sure why these two stories are being told simultaneously. This all changes on page 23, when she says “Gary and I were at a little Chinese restaurant”. Before then he is exclusively referenced as “your father”. This sudden reveal allows the reader to make a the connection. The first of these is that the story of Louise and the heptapods is also the story of how she met her husband, and Hannah’s father. It also indicates that her foresight with regards to her daughter is connected to how she met Gary, and by extension, the heptapods. This indication plays nicely with her (and the audience’s) increased understanding of the heptapod logograms, and their time-seeing properties.
This is also why it’s so important for the sake of the plot that Louise and Ian (Gary) be separated in the movie. In writing, she can ambiguously describe her husband without the reader knowing it’s Gary, but in a film, she can’t have any of the flashbacks include her husband because the audience would recognize him and a moment of epiphany would not exist until towards the end of the film.
I think this is an interesting point, considering Gary is a character and seems to be the only overlapping physical constant. The link between Gary being Louise’s scientific partner and her future husband allows for the incredible shift in chronological thinking that occurs in Louise to have a profound personal aspect. Without the constant switching back and fourth to memories, or premonitions I guess, of her daughter, the story could be read as incredible commentary on the way that we humans think an be left at that. However, the familial and personal aspect prohibits that entirely, forcing the reader to consider the consequences that come with non-chronological memory and thinking. Additionally, it is interesting to see the relationship between Louise and Gary shift and change as the reader is jolted back and forth between time- flipping from work partners, to a married couple to separated and mourning the loss of their daughter, only to go back again several times.
I agree with Nick that the connection of these two stories is the fact that the physicist in the short story, Gary Donelly is the father of Lousie’s daughter. Additionally, I think that this connection is solidified when the reader realizes or can infer that Gary is the father of the daughter being told the story. For me, this occurs on page 20 when Gary says “hey Louise, want to go out for dinner? My treat.” One of the reasons I really enjoyed reading this short story was the fact that our increased knowledge of the Heptapods being a species with a “simultaneous mode of consciousness” allowed us to understand why these two stories were being told simultaneously, something Nick mentioned as well in his comment.
Lastly, going off of Nick’s comment about the movie, I have yet to watch Arrival so I am excited to see how these two stories will be told on screen. And even more so, curious to see what / how the director chooses to depict the Heptapods language and writing.
I believe the two stories are connected through common questions that the story makes readers consider. First, the stories pose the question that if someone knows the future, what would they want to do, if anything, to change their present climate or situation. In the Story of Your Life the two stories collide most notably when Louise finally understands the Heptapod language and then tells her unborn daughter what exactly will happen to her during the course of her life leading to her death. This also eludes to a question regarding free will, and whether or not one has free will who can predict the future. While it seems like one should be able to do so, it is not always an obvious answer.
Secondly, the stories repeatedly require readers to consider their thoughts on what it would mean to know the future. As Louise continues to understand her surroundings and climate, their becomes constant thought by readers wondering if knowing the future is a good or a bad thing, and on the other hand, grapple with the idea that knowing the future does not allow one to alter the outcome of a certain space.
really like what Dawson said in his response, so I wanted to respond to what he said and also expand on it a little. In terms of his first point about changing the future, I think that this is the question that actually underlies all of science fiction. I said this in my essay but Ray Bradbury, a famous American author and screenwriter, claims that, “Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again.” In other words, although not all science fiction is about the future or being able to change the future, science fiction by definition permanently changes the future. Thus, giving people the power to change and see the future gives them the power to write science fiction.
The second part of this response is, whether or not people want to know the future. To some, part of living life is the surprises that come with it while for others they need to know everything that is going to happen to them. In my particular opinion, I don’t think I would want to know the future because then I would be scared of all the bad things that would happen to me. Everybody has bad things happen in life and dealing with them is simply part of living but I think I would be scared if I were to know them in advance. In the Story of Your Life, the answer is not directly stated but I think one can imply that knowing the future harms Louise’s daughter because it causes her death. In many ways, it’s not impossible to believe that if she didn’t know the future, the daughter would be alive. All in all, there is no universal answer, but this is an extremely interesting topic to consider.