17 pages • 34 minutes read
Lisel MuellerThe End of Science Fiction
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“The End of Science Fiction” employs unrhymed free verse organized in four stanzas of varying length, for a total of 36 lines. The point of view of the speaker starts in first person plural, using the pronoun “we.”
Syntactically, the first two stanzas use more passive language than the last two, which serves to create narrative distance as well as to lend a tone of instability to the experience of reading the poem: “We are the gods who can unmake / the world in seven days” (Lines 5-6) is an indefinite statement that suggests capability, but not strong will. Likewise, in the second stanza, the poet creates a kind of uncertainty in the poem with the line, “We are beginning to live forever” (Line 8). The grammar and language choices in the first two stanzas create a violent, disembodied, and precarious mood.
In the third stanza, the speaker adopts an imperative tone, directing the reader to “[i]nvent something” (Line 13). The shift to plain, active language allows the reader to create images of the natural world easily: A man, a woman, a child, a garden. A city burns as another woman willfully positions her body homeward “and is changed to salt” (Line 30). The language, even in its moderate use of the passive tense, is as forthright in the second two stanzas as the deeds they describe, full of consequence, in contrast to the first lines of the poem, which imply instability and chaos.
Allusion
Allusion is a reference to something else, and, in this poem, the poet employs this literary technique to link the poem to past histories, legacies, cultural phenomena, and other works of literature. Mueller incorporates many allusions from the Bible’s Old Testament and New Testament, as well as from a Latin epic poem by Virgil and several Greek myths.
From the beginning of the poem, the speaker declares that science fiction, as a narrative genre, no longer exists. At the same time, the poet employs language that lends a very dystopian tone to the first two stanzas that mimics the style of many works of science fiction. Though the tone is not an allusion to science fiction, but an imitation of it, it does introduce the allusions to follow.
The allusions begin in stanza three. The poet gives only the most basic details of the allusions, but the stories are, for the most part, clearly recognizable. The speaker references Adam and Eve and the infant Jesus Christ as well as Aeneas, the figure hauling his father out of Troy as it burns. Next, an allusion to Greek mythology refers to Theseus’s escape from the labyrinth thanks to clever Ariadne, followed by his abandonment of her on an island. The speaker does not identify any of the narratives, and readers who recognize them do so because they are stories that have cycled through generations.
The use of allusion contrasts with the vaguely menacing, futuristic mood at the beginning of the poem. There is danger in the old stories, as well as greed, hubris, and heartbreak, however, the ancient tales unroll at a speed the human body and brain can comprehend, unlike the computer-generated narrative that leaves its creators behind. Human beings can see themselves in the “ancient words” (Line 34), and can relate to the human conditions therein. There is no such opportunity for reflection in the “aluminum” (Line 9) casings of a tech-driven storyline. The future, for humans, depends on paying attention to the enduring narratives of human character, to the stories that pre-date technology as humans know it today.
Enjambment
Enjambment is the continuation of a phrase from one line to the next, or from one stanza to the next. Enjambment allows for multiple meanings, creates opportunities for word play, and affects the speed with which the reader travels through the poem.
In “The End of Science Fiction,” Mueller uses enjambment selectively. The first line of the poem is a whole phrase: “This is not a fantasy, this is our life” (Line 1). It is a serious statement, perfectly declarative. However, in the next line, the subjects are not people with lives, but “characters” (Line 2). the second and third lines: “We are the characters / who have invaded the moon” (Lines 2-3). The first line of those two enjambed lines creates tension with the line before it, which is not enjambed. The enjambment extends to “who have invaded the moon” (Line 3), another serious statement of fact. These three lines—the first a complete phrase and the following two an example of enjambment—create a confusion that grabs and holds the reader’s attention.
In the second stanza, three lines are enjambed, while the other three offer complete statements with full stops. “Both hands are stopped at noon” (Line 7) directs the reader to stop as well, to consider the implications of time stopping. The following three lines are enjambed. They create mystery as well as introduce the idea of a disembodied, anonymous human race, immortal but “with numbers stamped on our backs” (Line 10). The next two full stops, once again, encourage the reader to pause over the phrases rather than move on quickly.
In the last two stanzas, enjambment directs the reader to carry on through the poem more quickly. For example, enjambment takes the reader from “invent[ing] an island” (Line 21) to “no loss of sleep over his betrayal” (Line 23) over three consecutive lines in one breathless swoop. Enjambment provides a poignant and dramatic end to the poem, piquing the reader’s curiosity by inviting the reader to find out what the object is that will follow “difficult as a child’s “(Line 35), until landing on the last line, which contain those “first steps” (Line 36) that represent the human need to strive and the role of striving in the notion of human potential.
