Write a detailed character analysis of Klausner as seen in Dahl's short story, The Sound Machine. Include all character traits you observed in him, substantiate your answer with quotes from the text. 400 to 450 words.
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Answer:
The protagonist—and perhaps antagonist—of the story and inventor of the titular machine. Despite being described as a small and frail “moth of a man,” he is intensely dedicated to his research into the “world of sound” unavailable to human ears, displaying a painstaking attention to detail and an impassioned disposition. He becomes incredibly animated and passionate when he is asked about it, a quality that is off-putting to those around him, with both the local Doctor and his neighbor Mrs. Saunders questioning his mental state. Klausner’s background is largely unknown; an occupation is eluded to but never expounded upon (the Doctor makes a comment about Klausner working with sound for his job), perhaps putting his credibility into question. As the story develops and Klausner becomes convinced that plants can feel pain, his scientific interest slowly begins to morph into abject revulsion and his obsession with the machine is coupled with a newfound sense of empathy for the tree he cut with an axe to test his theories. Despite this remorse, though, he continues to gouge the tree with the axe in the hopes that the Doctor will also hear the tree’s pained cry. That Klausner continues to afflict pain on plants even while appearing genuinely regretful of his actions highlights the corrupting influence that some scientific discoveries can have on humankind. Klausner destroys nature and his own innocence just for the sake of learning, and Dahl implies that Klausner’s discover is simply not worth it. By the end of the story, when Klausner forcefully commands the Doctor to tend to the mangled tree as if it were a human patient, the Doctor begins to fear Klausner becoming violent and views him as a madman. To this end, Klausner can also be said to represent the mad scientist archetype common in science fiction stories of the period.
Klausner Quotes in The Sound Machine
The The Sound Machine quotes below are all either spoken by Klausner or refer to Klausner. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: Scientific Advancements and Forbidden Knowledge Theme Icon). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Vintage edition of The Sound Machine published in 1990.
The Sound Machine Quotes
It was a warm summer evening and Klausner walked quickly through the front gate and around the side of the house and into the garden at the back. He went on down the garden until he came to a wooden shed and he unlocked the door, went inside and closed the door behind him. The interior of the shed was an unpainted room. Against one wall, on the left, there was a long wooden workbench, and on it, among a littering of wires and batteries and small sharp tools, there stood a black box about three feet long, the shape of a child's coffin.
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