personify this

“inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves” (263)  these words stuck in my mind while I was reading The Comet. Taken out of context such as I have done, it is difficult to determine if the young woman is looking at a dead body, or a piece of technology. Even through its “death” Julia feels that it is “looking” at her. The technology that can communicate with her has some sort of life of its own that is missing, or is it? The fact that the telephone is black is also a possible commentary on race relations throughout the story- adding the lines “it was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves” changes the tone of the lines even more. The personification of the words “sarcastic” and “unfeeling” create the idea that the phone is judging her, judging that this is the first time Julia has ever been this close to the manual workings of a telephone, judging that she lives, judging that she is a white woman trying to survive her world being fip turned upside down.

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