Twilight. John W. Campbell.

The story under analysis is called Twilight written by John W. Campbell. It is about an oddly dressed
hitchhiker whom the main character – Jim Bendell picks up in Texas. The traveler claimed to have been
from 1000 years in the future and to have travelled 7 million years forward in time where man are dying
out. The main theme of the story is that the humanity has lost is curiosity for knowledge and life and
that this is the reason of the people dying.
Jim Bendell said that he picked up a man by the road but this man was not like every hitchhiker namely
he didn’t complain about the job or land but the author uses epiphora “he just said It” to emphasize that
the story was unusual and worth listening. Further on follow the description of the traveler, his clothes
looked like silver, but they were soft as silk and at night they glowed just a little. Then in the description
of this man the narrator uses gradation “He was beautiful. No; he was handsome. He wasn't either one.
He was magnificent” to underline the unusual look of the stranger. To contribute to this idea the author
employs simile “the voice sounded like an organ talking, only it was human”.
Soon we learn the name of the stranger – Ares Sen Kenlin. Jim Bendell first thought that the man was
crazy and he even called him “nut” but after the song that Ares Sen Kenlin sang the narrator believed
every word and at once he thought that he knew this little men of the future . He said “I could hear their
voices, in the queer, crackling, un-English words. I could read their bewildered longings. It was in a
minor key, I think. It called, it called and asked, and hunted hopelessly. That was the song, and it made
me cold. It shouldn't be sung around people of today. It almost killed something. It seemed to kill hope”.
The traveler said that these little men had large heads which contained only brains.
Further on Ares told about spending 6 months in the future. The cities of the future were almost all
deserted with the machines working blindly, perfectly, with the tireless, ceaseless perfection their
designers had incorporated in them. The author employs two breaks in the narrative “long after those
designers and their sons, and their sons' sons had no use for them—“ and “When Earth begins to crack
and break, those perfect, ceaseless machines will try to repair her—“ to emphasize that the machines
cannot stop working and moreover there is nobody to stop them.
The traveler decided to phone to other cities to find out if there were people left , here the author
employs gradation “once—twice—thrice—a round dozen times” to stress that the earth was almost
deserted. There is also an allusion namely the names of the cities are changed but they are still
recognizable: Yawk City, Lunon City, Paree, Shkago, Singpor, others. San Frisco and Jacksville were
the only two cities on North America still used. John Campbell uses metaphor concerning the city he
called it “the city of the dead ashes of human hopes. The hopes not of a race, not the whites, nor the
yellow, nor the blacks, but the human race”.
In San Frisco Ares saw the dwarfed people with large head end eyes who were totally lonely. Their
loneliness was beyond hope. But their problem was not only loneliness but also lose of curiosity “They
were not curious! Man had lost the instinct of curiosity”.
For the second time Ares told about the song that the men in the future sang which can be interpreted as
framing. But this time the author uses simile namely he compares the song with a lunatic being
murdered horribly.”The song was the essence of humanity's last defeat, I guess. You always feel sorry
for the chap who loses after trying hard. Well, you could feel the whole of humanity trying hard—and
losing. And you knew they couldn't afford to lose, because they couldn't try again”
At the end of the story the author explains the title of the story: twilight means the twilight of the race,
of the humanity, that the future is not optimistic.