Dialing Our Death: A Critical Response to Stephen King’s Cell

While Stephen Kings Cell might be about zombies, the 2006 novel is also a clever commentary on Americas reliance on technology. Kings setup is that, on the afternoon of October 1, a strange pulse is broadcast across Ameri buttocks cell ph whiz networks. The pulse, when heard by population on their cells, immediately renders cell-phone users into murderous, zombie-like creatures. These people, known as Phoners, argon no longer human. The few people unaffected(p) by the pulse, called Normies, attempt to fight back for survival.King hints heavily that our dependence upon technology will be our undoing. The fundamental characters struggle to survive runs secondary to Kings technophobic message. The plot is effectively more principal(prenominal) than the narrative it supports. Most of the attention is paid to the pulse itself. The rampaging zombies are given a reason to constitute their brains have been literally scrambled like a skillet of eggs (43). Their violent and gory actions a re symbolic of what King feels our world is becoming.Even if Kings doesnt think using cell phones and see websites will lead to apocalypse or rampages, perhaps he is (at the very least) suggesting that we are becoming more everyplace as mind slight. When the pulse strikes, the Phoners were connected via network. Everyone affected has been linked together. The danger, King suggests, is that our shrinking world is non ineluctably a good thing. To King, cell phones and the Internet have ceased to be modes of transmitting information. Sharing information is less important than swapping videos and songs with friends now, or having conversations while walking through a park.People look like they are talk to themselves. King feels that technology has left us vulnerable. We might not be vulnerable to a zombie-creating pulse, scarcely we are certainly vulnerable to losing our sense of identity and humanity. We are giving ourselves, little by little, over to technology. In Cell, the min dless Phoners are soon organized into Flocks, which move around in patterns very more like migrating birds. This underscores Kings central fear the marriage of technology and biology. He seems to be affair for a world that exists offline.In his book The Soft Edge, media philosopher Paul Levinson agrees that the fundamental character of technology closely recalls mankind. on that point are legitimate concerns to consider as we move toward an ever-increasing dependence upon the technologies available to us. Levinson states that the wisdom of nature is not always good for us, insofar as it accommodates hurricanes, drought, famine, earthquake, and all manner of destructive occurrences (150). Natures determination toward destruction and collapse, also known as entropy, is mirrored in technology and, very clearly, in Cell.Like nature itself, destruction is part of the nature of technology, King believes. Levinson questions whether technology can have things similar to ugly ragweed, wh ich mustiness be monitored and controlled. He asks whether ragweed can be controlled without suppressing the beauty and value that emerges right next to it, untended (Levinson 151). His vision is aligned with Kingstechnology has the capacity to destroybut he feels that it can be controlled. Technological systems will not revolt against us, as they do in Cell, but they must be actively watched.Cell paints a stark portrait of society on the brink of collapseone that people have willingly bought into. In Kings mind, we are ushering ourselves to our own demise, if not our passing play of humanity. Something as simple and ubiquitous as a cell phone is turned into a official document of terror. With Cell, King makes us question whether we have established systems for ourselves that are not so much ministrant as they are corruptive. His novel is a cautionary tale about where we are heading as a civilization. When we next answer the phone, King suggests the fate of our own humanity may be calling.