What Is The Setting Of The Cold Equation By Tom Godwin

614 Words3 Pages

The Cold Equations
In this thrill seeking short story “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin. It starts out with a warmhearted 18 year old girl, Marilyn who shows up on an EDS ship getting pulled into a life or death situation in just a couple of paragraph into the book. She thought the easiest way to see her brother in Mimir is to be a stowaway, even when she was warned not to enter the ship she ignores the warning and becomes a stowaway anyway because she hadn't seen her brother in ten years. When she enters she finds out by Barton the EDS pilot that he has to eject her off the ship because there is not enough fuel for both of their weights combined to land the ship successfully and to get the mission done. The third person limited point of view allows us readers to watch and observe the characters which makes the audience feel involved with the characters actions and feelings throughout the short story.
The author does a fantastic job on creating the element of suspense throughout the short story by drawing the readers in with Marilyn’s letters that she writes to her loved …show more content…

It also makes the reader anxious because you are so close to them as if you as the reader could help them in a situation that has no happy ending, but the reader can’t help because the reader isn’t the one narrating the story. “He pushed the lever up and the door slid its quick barrier between them enclosing her in black and utter darkness for her last moments of life.”(Godwin, 182) The narration is a huge part of this short story because if it was told in first person then the reader wouldn't be so involved and emotionally attached with the other characters. By having the short story told in third person the reader can experience the other character’s side of view instead of the story coming from one person’s opinion and