How the short story that inspired Arrival helps us

2017/1/31 17(01How the short story that inspired Arrival helps us interpret the film s major twist - The Verge

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How the short story that inspiredArrival helps us interpret the film’smajor twistJan Thijs / Paramount Pictures

This post contains major plot spoilers about Arrival.

In one of the final scenes of Arrival, the new first-contact science fictionfilm with a focus on linguistics, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) explainswhy she got divorced. “He said I made the wrong choice,” the linguist tellsher daughter Hannah. It’s an easy line to overlook, especially as the gravityof the film’s second-half surprise sinks in. Throughout the film, Louise isexperiencing not her memories of the past, but living out precognitivemoments of her own future. She is experiencing time out of order, becauseher efforts to understand an alien language have irreversibly rewired herbrain.

The credit for this narrative trick goes to author Ted Chiang, who plottedArrival back in 2002 as a first-person short story called Story of Your Life.His work cleverly uses different tenses, mixing future, past, and present toweave the complex non-linear knot of Louise’s life in a way reminiscent ofBilly Pilgrim from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Chiang’s hiddenmeanings, and the things that inevitably got lost in translating his words tothe big screen, are pivotal to help viewers understand what Arrival issaying.

"Reading Ted Chiang’s ‘Story of Your Life’ givesyou a deeper understanding of the message of‘Arrival’"

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Arrival is a versatile science fiction film that communicates on manylevels. It’s about language and cooperation, about people transcendingbarriers and immersing themselves in a new culture to understand aforeign race. The aliens, arriving in 12 monolithic space ships and knownas heptapods because of their seven-legged giant squid appearance, areterrifying. But they are peaceful and want to help humanity, because theirown non-linear perception of time tells them they’ll need our helpthousands of years from now. Louise’s journey into how the heptapods’minds work — how the aliens communicate, and what that says about howthey perceive reality — is a common genre trope, but director DenisVilleneuve uses it to subvert the usual routine of the Hollywoodblockbuster.

Yet the film is more concerned with a deeper, grander theme about freewill and personal responsibility. Story of Your Life spotlights those ideasmore than any others. The theme rests on a line Louise utters in one ofArrival’s closing scenes. “If you could see your whole life laid out in frontof you, would you change things?” she asks her future husband IanDonnelly. Put another way, would you rob someone of their existence, andyourself of the time shared with them on Earth, if you knew they would oneday would feel pain, and you would feel their loss?



Paramount

The question haunts the narrative because Louise is harboring a terriblesecret. She knows Hannah will die young. She knows this before she evendecides to conceive Hannah with Ian, a theoretical physicist who, yearsearlier, helped Louise crack the alien language, even though he does notspeak it himself. When Louise tells Ian their daughter will die, he’snaturally upset. He assumes Louise could have warned him, or refused tohave a child — changed the future. But Louise made the choice, evenknowing the eventual outcome.

In Story of Your Life, the eventual rift between Louise and Ian is leftunexplored, but the plot is largely the same. Louise’s understanding of theheptapods’ written language reorients her sense of cause and effect. Itturns her perception of time into a two-way river that Chiang illustratesthrough brief intermissions that visit Hannah’s childhood and adolescencein future tense, as if Louise is forecasting the beats of her daughter’s life.Using the real-world theory of linguistic relativity — which states,controversially, that what language we speak affects how our brain works— Chiang transforms Louise’s life into a series of out-of-order moments



that can be experienced singularly, including her daughter’s eventualdeath.

"Unlike ‘Arrival,’ ‘Story of Your Life’ focusessolely on Louise’s new understanding of time"

But Story of Your Life diverges from Arrival in one key aspect. WhileLouise immerses herself in the heptapods’ language, the rest of the world’sexperts, including Ian, share knowledge about the aliens’ understanding ofphysics, math, and other disciplines. In the film, Ian doesn’t have muchnarrative purpose. In the story, his explorations of how the aliens perceivelight refraction winds up informing Louise’s new understanding of time.

In the story, there is no military tension, no setting up of China or Russiaas aggressors, and no misguided American soldiers sabotaging thespaceship that landed in America. Story of Your Life is entirely focused onLouise’s rewired perception of her own life, and her pivotal choice to have adaughter despite the pain she knows it will cause. The reveal — that Louisehas seen her daughter’s future — is not a surprise sci-fi twist, but a slowand steady realization. Even Chiang’s title has an obvious double meaningalmost from the get-go, the pronoun “your” belonging both to Louise’sdaughter and the idea that we as humans are made of our memories anddefined by our choices.

This message exists in Arrival, but it’s hidden under broader plotmovements, big drama, and more visible Hollywood layers. Chiang limitsthe scope of Story of Your Life to a reflection on personal choice. He saysforeseeing a choice and then making it is not the cruelty of fate in action,but a powerful exercise in free will.



Paramount

Viewers are already theorizing about the film’s plot, and whether it meansthat humans who learn the heptapod language can alter their own futures.Whether Louise can change anything is besides the point. In Arrival’sdeterministic universe, free will exists in the form of following through ona choice you already know you’ll make. In effect, by choosing not to alterthe future, you’re creating it, and actively affirming it.

“The heptapods are neither free nor bound as we understand thoseconcepts; they don’t act according to their will, nor are they helplessautomatons,” Louise says in Chiang’s story. “What distinguishes theheptapods’ mode of awareness is not just that their actions coincide withhistory’s events; it is also that their motives coincide with history’spurposes. They act to create the future, to enact chronology.”

"“They act to create the future, to enactchronology.”"

Underneath the technical complexity of the explanation is a profound truth

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Chiang is communicating — and one Arrival similarly hammers home.“What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person?” Louiseponders. “What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to actprecisely as she knew she would?” And it is precisely because Louiseunderstands what it will be like to lose her daughter that she chooses tobring her into the world nonetheless.

Readers aren’t necessarily supposed to agree with Louise’s choice. (Someof our own writers don’t.) But Arrival isn’t about time travel. It’s also not acommentary on gene-modification, abortion, or any other hot-button topicabout using our foresight into the future to force our present path todiverge. It’s about acceptance, understanding our life’s choices, and livingas if any one moment were as valuable or meaningful as the next.

Paramount

The film suggests that knowing what will happen in the future doesn’tdiminish the meaning behind a choice you’ll make today. On the contrary,

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it says every choice you do make can be made knowing it will activelyshape what’s to come. As Emerson once wrote, life's a journey, not adestination. In the circular, non-linear minds of Arrival’s aliens and LouiseBanks, the destination doesn’t even exist.

Instead of treating that message like a superpower to acquire, the filmdelivers it as a subtle worldview. Hidden under Arrival’s more palatablethemes about overcoming cultural differences and uniting as one species isChiang’s more direct message about learning how to appreciate life’smoments, to live outside the bounds of time.

If we could see our lives laid out before us, would we change anything?Story of Your Life — and by extension Arrival — is telling us to live as ifthe answer is, and always will be, a resolute no.

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How the short story that inspired Arrival helps us