Close Reading Of Tommy Macleod

With every step towards understanding, Leinster also includes a step back to the idea that the alien is not man but in fact the other, creating frustration and little progress as the ships stare off at each other as “the visiplates show[ed] only a vast mistiness outside and the two fiercely burning stars in the nebula’s heart”(Leinster 273). Considering the substantial application of parallel structure, a technique in which the text is “a structure to have the same pattern of words to show that two or more ideas have the same level of importance”, the placement of the phrases, light and mist, amid others is such that they act like mirrors to one another (Blake et.al 71). From light and mist to the two ships, with man’s ship described as mirror-like

During the initial contact, it is Tommy who notices that the technology isn’t correctly ‘seeing’ the object in front of them. “He [Tommy] had just completed a quite unique first—a complete photographic record of the movement of a nebula during a period of four thousand years, taken by one individual with the same apparatus and with control exposures to detect and record any systematic errors” (Leinster 253). As a lens, Tommy provides a unique image of the proceeding events. Not only does he work with image capturing equipment, but also his role aboard the manned spacecraft, the Llanvabon, is to see and interpret the setting. Through the use of technology, such as the vision plates and distance locators, it is through Tommy that readers are shown the aliens, bit by bit. From the very beginning of the short story, it is Tommy that interprets the proceeding, including that human perception may be more reliable than the technology on the ship. As first contact with aliens is established, it is Tommy who notices that the technology isn’t seeing correctly. “Tommy Dort said meditatively: “D’you know, sir, I saw something like this on a liner on the Earth-mars run once, when we were being located by another ship. Their locator beam was the same frequency as ours, and every time it hit, it registered like something monstrous and solid” (Leinster

From vision plates to distance indicators, the presence of technology parallels to what might be called ‘natural’ vision, or in other words, seeing through one’s eyes. Throughout the narrative, Leinster continually inserts the tech referred to as vision plates, or visiplates. “The plates, which showed every star of visual magnitude and could be stepped up to any desired magnification, portrayed stars of every imaginable degree of brilliance, in the startlingly different colors they show outside of atmosphere” (Leinster 252). Within the discussion of vision, there are several parallels made between the use of tech to conceptualize the alien’s ship followed by the same image being visualized through the eyes of Tommy, the main protagonist. As the ship photographer and navigator, Tommy does not only access the artificial vision but does not rely upon it completely. Considering that Tommy is the main operator of the visiplates, it’s not only through his perception of events but also his interpretation of the readouts concerning the various pieces of tech. Bearing in mind the application of vision, the short story plies into how one sees something, either through the filter of technology or prejudice, readers follow Tommy as he is able to map out, and observe the alien as something familiar. “He had seen the