Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet

Atwood uses powerful, vivid images to quickly delineate a changing world. In the first age, a striking metaphor describes the relationship between humans and the world as a harvest of ripe fruit: “We smelled the earth and rolled in it; its juices ran down our chins” (Paragraph 2). In the second age, the concrete gives way to the mystical, as money gains godlike powers and takes away people’s connection to daily life and work: “We could not eat this money, wear it or burn it for warmth; but as if by magic it could be changed into such things” (Paragraph 3). Finally, in the fourth age, harsh nouns replace the previously abundant, garden-like images of the planet, which now features deserts “made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth” (Paragraph 5). Despite the lack of named characters, Atwood creates empathy for the annihilated people of her world through another trick of imagery: Although most of the story features a first-person plural narrator, the last lines switch to a first-person singular, as everyone on the planet has died except a lone chronicler creating a memorial for any future alien passers-by. The image of a solitary person in a desert echoes the wise men’s elevation of one “stone in the sand in the setting sun” as beautiful (Paragraph 6). There is nothing aesthetically pleasing about the dead planet—it’s just a cautionary tale.