Specimen Days
Michael Cunningham
 "In the Machine", set in mid-to-late 19th Century New York, begins in the aftermath of a wake. Simon, a young man working in a factory had been accidentally sucked into a factory machine which crushed him to death. Due to the poverty present in the lower classes during the Industrial Revolution, Simon's family sends Lucas, Simon's disfigured younger brother, to work at the factory in Simon's place. Lucas has a strange affliction in which he intermittently and uncontrollably spouts the poetry of Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' (Lucas' favourite book). Walt Whitman was a contemporary of the time and Lucas meets him during the course of the story. Lucas is also concerned Simon has become a ghost and inhabits not only the machine that killed him but all the machines that are becoming commonplace in the city as a result of the Industrial Revolution. This concern leads Lucas to fear for the life of Catherine, Simon's bereaved girlfriend. Lucas believes Simon's ghost may try to inhabit the machines at the factory where Catherine works as a seamstress with a view to take Catherine to the afterlife by killing her through the machine's function. Lucas embarks on a mission to save Catherine by preventing her from going to work. Lucas' fear of Simon's ghost is, at the same time, a fear of the Machine and, on a larger scale, the Industrial Revolution in New York City itself. The machines replace humans, even kill them, and the industrial revolution has demeaned the importance of each human individual with its positioning of people as cogs in its own giant machine. In this light, Lucas' fears and Whitman's transcendental poetry represent the affirmation of humanity and each individual's importance.