ENGLISH

LITERATURE
PROJECT
2021-2022

SUBMITTED BY:
ANDEL JINSON
XI-HUMANITIES
 WRITTEN
ASSIGNMENT
KLAUSNER SEEMED TO BE
AN ECCENTRIC MAN BUT
HIS CONCERNS WERE
QUITE REAL.DISCUSS THE
STATEMENT WITH
REFERENCE TO ROALD
DAHL'S 'THE SOUND
MACHINE'
 INTRODUCTION
'The Sound Machine’ by Roald Dahl,
published in his collection “The Complete
Short Stories'' in 1949, is about Klausner
and his obsession with sounds.‘The Sound
Machine’ is a popular short story which
belongs to the genre of science fiction.
But in this story Ronald Dahl combines
science fiction and environment.In this
story we have the theme of obsession,
instability, fear and dedication.
Klausner, the protagonist of the story,
spends his entire time with his sound
machine. What first starts out as a normal
experiment that excites Klausner
becomes something which Klausner
obsesses over.Klausner passionately
believes in the communication between
non-human living beings especially
plants.
 He believes that plants like humans
speak to each other but in much higher
frequencies which are beyond human
limits of hearing.He is certain that if he
can build the technology sensitive to high
frequencies, he will be able to listen to
what the plants and other animals speak
and also prove his theory to others.Even
though he is unyielding about his theory
he does not find many believers and
struggles to convince them. He doesn't
lose hope and tries to make a sound
machine that can register and help hear
sounds made by plants. It can translate
the sounds and pitches into coherent and
recognizable patterns.
 THEMES
Main themes involved in this story are
the theme of
obsession,instability,fear and dedication

Obsession:
The obsession which conquered Klausner
was one of the main themes of the story.
Roald Dahl clearly shows the nature of
obsession
by showing Klausner becoming increasingly
devoted to using the sound machine and to
hear the high frequency sounds around
him.We can see Klausner calmly tinkering
with the machine's electrical components in
the very beginning of the story, we see him
becoming more absorbed in his work after
the first successful test, waking first thing in
the morning to begin another test.
There is also a scene where he calls the
doctor in the morning without thinking
about the social awkwardness of calling
someone at that time. He calls him to
prove that his invention works perfectly.
He had already tested it with his neighbor
Mrs. Saunders, when she cut a rose twig
from her garden.She finds him abnormal
that she heads back inside her
home.Klausner heard a shrieking
frightening high pitched noise while Mrs.
Saunders cut the stem of the rose.He
wanted to try something similar to it so
he tried it on a tree in the park and
surprisingly heard the shrieking sound as
if the tree was crying.he was totally
obsessed to this machine in a bad way
that he ask the doctor to apply iodine on
the tree wound.
 Dedication:
Klausner was truly dedicated to his work
as we can see from the very start of the
story.Even after his sound machine broke
from the branch of the tree he has a
mindset to rebuild everything from the
start which should be taken into
note.Klausner has an unusual lifestyle in
which his life appears to be dedicated to
the sound machine. At no stage in the
story does Dahl give the reader an insight
into any other activity that Klausner
might participate in.There is no mention
of Klausner having any friends in the
story and the only person who knows him
well is the Doctor. Someone that
Klausner appears to trust. Though it is
noticeable that the doctor is somewhat
afraid of Klausner while he is applying the
iodine to the tree.
IS KLAUSNER'S ECCENTRIC
BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS HIS
WORK NOT REAL?

Klausner is an amateur scientist who is

fond of sounds. He is a weak, pale and
agitated kind of person. He seems to be
an abnormal fellow. His large head, with
his hat on, is generally kept inclined
toward his left shoulder as though his
neck were not quite strong
enough to support it strongly. His face is
smooth and pale, almost white, and the
pale grey eyes that blink and peer and
behind a pair of steel spectacles are
bewildered, unfocussed, remote. He
looks like a moth of man, dreamy and
distracted. While working on his machine,
he gets excited and animated.
 He keeps on gently scratching the lobe of
his ear while explaining some point to his
friend Dr Scott. In fact, he is taken to be a
fantastic, peculiar person by both the
Doctor and Mrs Saunders.
Whether Klausner is eccentric or not is
an important question. He may be
fantastic but his concerns are real. He
wants others to realize that our attitude
towards plant life is harmful. Plants too
have life like human beings. They too feel
pain if they are hit. They cry with pain
when they are brutally cut. In fact
Klausner is concerned with conservation
of environment and deforestation.We
think that human beings are ignoring
nature's sounds. Nature gives out a
number of sounds through natural
calamities. It is a warning to human
beings.
The smashing of the sound machine is
only symbolic. It could be any disaster
that nature can inflict upon humans if
treated cruelly. Thus if we ignore the
sounds of nature and keep on cutting the
trees indiscriminately we will meet the
same fate as the sound machine.
 CONCLUSION
The Sound Machine by Roald Dahl is a
brilliant piece of science fiction that
explores the theme of obsession and the
possibility that plants feel pain when they
are being cut for use or consumption.
Through this short story, we discover the
art of a passionate mind that is devoted
to proving a hypothesis to the point of
madness. The short story also points out
issues concerning the maddening pain
plants go through when they are cut from
their roots. The way Roald Dahl has spun
this fantasy of a crazy inventor makes for
a truly engaging read that explores ideas
humans don’t necessarily think
about.Adding to the irony, the falling
branch follows the theme of
personification by suggesting that the
tree intentionally ruined Klausner's
machine as penalty for wounding it with
the axe.
.
However, one may also view it as limits of
which it may be possible and the
inevitable opposition between the
natural world and humanity’s artificial
inventions and technology, which all said
have done more harm than good to the
natural order of things