Preview

Cold Equations By Tom Goodwin: An Analysis

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
400 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Cold Equations By Tom Goodwin: An Analysis
Technology has many benefits towards people, most positive. Travel is easier and faster and medicine is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was even fifty years ago. With the power of technology, someone can get in their car and be able to find any location on the planet because of satellites. Technology has made a positive impact on people, it has made transportation more enjoyable and also significantly easier for people to get help with their daily health needs.

In the story “Cold Equations”, by Tom Goodwin, there is space travel. Something such as this would only be possible because of technology. Just in the last 100 years, transportation has changed very rapidly, in that span, people have even went into space. The ship in the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The short story Cold Equations by Tom Godwin takes place on a ship called EDS. The space cruiser is piloted by a man named Barton. He has an order of killing the stowaway who snuck onto the ship because the weight on the EDS is too much for the ship to handle. In the process of hunting down the stowaway, he realizes it was a young innocent girl named Marilyn. Once Barton understands what kind of person Marilyn is, he doesn’t kill her immediately because he knows her reasons were pure. Marilyn only wanted to see her brother, Gerry, again after ten years of being apart and was ignorant to the fact that her life can end with the decision of sneaking onto the ship. Barton begins to feel compassion after being with her and tries…

    • 983 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The short story “Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin is about human nature versus reality, because the girl’s nature told her to get on the EDS as a stowaway, but she didn't know the reality so she suffered the ultimate consequence of death. The EDS pilot knew he wasn’t alone in the EDS because of the heat sensor. He knew what he had to do, so he opened the cabinet where the human was. The pilot is surprised to find a young happy girl in the cabinet and gets thrown off his objective. He tells her what he has to do and she finds this news particularly upsetting.…

    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Cold Equation In the short story "The Cold Equation" Tom Godwin explains the theme that you don’t always get what you want. The characters are Marilyn Lee Cross,her brother, and the EDS pilot. When the EDS pilot finds her in the ship he had a conversation about how she was going to die. on page.…

    • 388 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Cold Equations

    • 629 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Cold Equations This short story by Tom Godwin is a very sentimental and lesson learning story. Briefly, it is about a ship on a designated mission which encounters a problem because the pilot on the ship encounters a stowaway, a young girl, and every stowaway found on board must be jettisoned, it was the law and there was absolutely no appeal. Marilyn, the stowaway’s name, was simply a teen and all she wanted was to see her brother whom she hadn’t seen in over 10 years she really meant no harm but she chose to ignore the warning sign in front of the ship. The EDS ships were only equipped with a certain amount of fuel that would reach them only to their designated destination, h amount of fuel would not power an EDS with mass of m plus x safely to it’s destination. Although it was very saddening that the pilot had to kill Marilyn, there was nothing else that could be done. If he would have let her stay on board he would die along with the other 6 men waiting on the EDS for the cure to their survival. In my opinion, his decision was justified, it was the law and he had done all he could do to help the poor girl but it wasn’t merely enough. The first reason to believe that the pilot’s decision was justified was because it was very logical and ethical. He had not other choice it was the law to kill a stowaway on board, no matter if it was a beautiful girl, beauty had no partake in this scenario it wasn’t like Earth. The pilot really did care about Marilyn’s life and he really did not want to kill her but, if it wouldn’t have been done the lives of many others would also have been gone. Although he did not want, he would have had no other choice. Either way there really was no win because if he would have let Marilyn stay on board and not jettisoned her, in the long run she would still have died along with the pilot and the other men counting on the EDS with the fever serum it was carrying. The second reason to believe the pilot’s…

    • 629 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Cold Equations

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages

    2.) Is the pilot likely to succeed? Most likely not because by doing so he would kill others.…

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tom Godwin's short story “ The Cold Equations “ demonstrates temptation vs reality, when the reality of something is not what is wanted but the outcome cannot be changed through temptation. A 17-year-old girl, Marilyn, had made a mistake by sneaking on to and EMS cruiser because she wanted to see her brother, that she hadn't seen in years, who was working at the destination of the cruiser. When she got found by the pilot he had thought that the stowaway was like any other man and protocol was said that whomever is not an EMS ,that is on the cruiser, must be evacuated or jettisoned, but when he had found this girl he was dumbfounded on if he should still follow protocol because killing her would not be alright with him. After communicating with stardust about if there was anything else to do, he had to do the job and was very hesitant about making her be ejected from the cruiser into…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Over the course of Unit one, I read a few stories that correlated with the theme of “Xenophobia, or fear of the unknown.” Many conflicts that were presented during these stories triggered fear, panic and fright, relating back to the “xenophobia” the characters felt during the story. The two stories that I read during this unit were “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin and “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells. I believe that H.G. Wells’ story contributed and related more to this unit’s theme. Therefore, I think there are many solid quotes that would reinforce my argument.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Imagery is the element of description and these two stories display it exceptionally. The Cold Equation by Tom Godwin and The Photograph by Will Weaver, descriptive imagery, that’s what they draw the reader along with. In The Cold Equation a teenage girl went onto the ship an EDS ship taking supplies to different planets and becomes a stowaway. In The Photograph there was a photo going around of a teacher that Anthony took. Then when they found out about the photo, Anthony ends up losing the position as team football manager and he gets in a lot of trouble taking a picture that he shouldn’t of taken. The direct focus on Imagery, in the stories The Cold Equation and The Photograph shows a parallel to one another by the physical, emotional and psychological vision they capture and cause in the reader.…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    They might say that technology has improved transportation, made connected with people easier by being able to call them, by doing numerous things. Technology makes communication a lot easier. You can talk to someone hundreds of miles around. Without having to travel and see them. Technology can also make people have a better work ethic.…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Introduction Technology has evolved over millions of years to writing on rocks in caves to writing on a piece of paper made from trees. These improvements have impacted the world in positive and negative ways. Positive ways can be such as the telephone it has gone from being a brick to a thin and small which has helped for holding it and when you are ringing someone. A negative impact can be such as drugs because of the new technology people just walking around on the streets can create their own drugs due to technology. The development of technology in sport has created a great positive improvement with athletes getting better scores in their preferred sports.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    To conclude, the potential benefits of technology are, it supports people and gives people social support, it can transform people’s lives for the better, and it develops parts of your brain that can only be developed through the usage of technology. Technology overall is very beneficial to the everyday person, it can give and image of the white house without going there, it can provide very interesting books, technology is very useful and very valuable, we benefit immensely from…

    • 637 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Albert Einstein once said “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” During the 1950s people felt much fear because people launched nuclear bombs which could lead to war, the atomic bomb was helpful because people used it in war to attack or defend their self. Ray Bradbury wrote science fiction text because he might know what was going to happen in the future. “ There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury, is about an electrical advanced house because their is a clock going on every 5 minutes. Therefore, technology has helped society.…

    • 383 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Technology can be used to help us. Technology can also negatively affect us. An example was the industrial revolution. Negative effects of the industrial revolution were pollution, and machines could cut of your finger and you could get lung cancer. Environmental changes during the industrial revolution had a negative impact.…

    • 153 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    First of all, technologies play a very important role in society because it makes life easier to live on and less time consuming. Technology has the ability to create shortcuts in working. People do not have to do all the hard labor anymore. For example, microwave ovens cook food easily without using any stoves and making a big mess. Some decade ago, there were no gas or electric stoves, people have to get firewoods and lighting them up for cooking. Technology makes things very easy to use comparing it in the old fashion way.…

    • 368 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Technology - the dark side

    • 1558 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Almost everyone believes that technology has made life easier and more comfortable and that it has enabled us to perform tasks that we could not do otherwise. A list of the benefits of technology would be very long indeed. However, as with almost everything we human beings have created, technology has a downside. There is, we might say, a dark side to technology.…

    • 1558 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays