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.
Answers
Explanation:
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.
Klausner is described in the short story as a dreamy small man, who always looks like his mind is not where his body is. This is because Klausner is always consumed with sound, trying to discover different realms of music that the human ear cannot process. His obsession with strange sounds forbidden to the human ear lead to his invention of a sound machine, which he claims can record sounds of high frequencies inaccessible to humans. However, his obsession with his machine takes the shape of madness when we find a flustered Klausner, almost threatening Scott to tell him what he heard when he hit a tree with an axe in order to confirm his hypothesis that plants let out a painful shriek when being cut. We understand that Klausner’s touch with reality is weak when he insists Doctor Scott to rub iodine over the gashes on the tree. On one hand, this gives us insights into Klausner’s deeply sensitive character. However, one the other hand, this gesture of Klausner also makes us question his mental state. Readers are left wondering if Klausner is a lunatic – something that both his doctor and his neighbour wondered as well. Klausner’s unstable mental state also makes us question if the sounds he heard on his machine were real, or were a product of his passion-drunk imagination.
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