The Last Question: What Makes A Story Confusing?

What Makes a Story Confusing? In the passage “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov, a series of characters, unconnected to each other, not even in the same time periods, are completely different; that is except for the fact that they are all human and have one question. How does one slow down, or stop, the end of the universe? All of these people ask this supercomputer, AC, this question. This occurs for millions of years until the species of man no longer exist and the computer is the only thing left. Only then does it learn how the problem can be solved. The story, although extremely interesting, was very confusing for many who read it. “The Last Question” is not very comprehensible unless the reader delves in deeper to find the true meaning
Isaac Asimov has had many ideas, all scientific due to his works as a biochemistry professor, but if looked into even further, one can learn the reason he wrote about the end of time. In every section of the short story, entropy, or using all of the resources in the universe, leading to the end of man. Even parents, when asked, explain to their young children that “‘Entropy, little sweet, is just a word which means the amount of running-down of the universe. Everything runs down,’” (page 4), and further into the future the idea of entropy consumes even more of the entire species’ thoughts. On page 7 it says, “‘But even so,’ said Man, ‘eventually it will all come to an end.’” The fact that throughout the entire story entropy and the end of the world are mentioned with every character leads the reader to wonder why exactly Asimov is so obsessed with it. When looking at Asimov’s life, one can learn that he was a president of the American Humanist Association, and a signer of the Humanist Manifesto II. Clearly, Isaac Asimov was a humanist, a man who believed that the fact there was a god or not was not important, but rather believed that people, their rights, problems, and goodness, were the sole importance of life. Using this knowledge the reader can then understand why Asimov was so worried about entropy that he wrote a book on it. The man was focusing on human problems, and the idea of
In the story it says, “ In a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, … , while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable,” (Page 6). Asimov wrote about the end of time as humans using up all of their resources, and not with a war to end all wars, as many authors do. Since Asimov was a humanist, he believed that all people have good in them and that “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Using this way of thinking, readers can grasp the idea Asimov was trying to portray through the passage; all people can be unified and work as