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The Fun They Had

The story "The Fun They Had" by Isaac Asimov is about two children, Tommy and Margie, who find an old book about schools from centuries ago. They discuss how school was different then, with real teachers instead of mechanical teachers. Margie reflects on how boring her mechanical teacher is compared to the lively schools from the past. The children debate whether real teachers could know as much as mechanical teachers do now. Ultimately, they have to return to their mechanical teachers, but Margie dreams of what it would be like to go to a school with real teachers from long ago.

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Кристина Орёл
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647 views3 pages

The Fun They Had

The story "The Fun They Had" by Isaac Asimov is about two children, Tommy and Margie, who find an old book about schools from centuries ago. They discuss how school was different then, with real teachers instead of mechanical teachers. Margie reflects on how boring her mechanical teacher is compared to the lively schools from the past. The children debate whether real teachers could know as much as mechanical teachers do now. Ultimately, they have to return to their mechanical teachers, but Margie dreams of what it would be like to go to a school with real teachers from long ago.

Uploaded by

Кристина Орёл
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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«The fun they had»

I am going to analyze the story which is entitled «The fun they had» by Isaac
Asimov, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.
The Fun They Had is one of the short stories written by Isaac Asimov. In this story,
the author touches the problem of technology influence on the teaching process, showing
us a future we will never see - the story takes place in 2157. A boy and a girl find an old
book about school. They discuss what they have read in there and compare these things
from the past with those they have now. At the end, it is time for them to go to their
mechanical teachers, but they still want to learn more about the school of old times,
because they like it.
The text is written in a lyrical manner. The story is a third person narration. The
narration is intertwining with dialogues, so the text seems lively. After reading this story,
one may feel all smiley, sunny and a little nostalgic and sad. The text can cause a wide
range of emotions, and mostly it is because of brilliant Asimov’s style of writing.
The text can be logically divided into four parts: finding a book, Margie’s
retrospection, animated discussion, and going back, down to earth. The first part is
introduction. Here we can see that Tommy shows Margie a book he has found in the attic
of his house, and they examine it. The author uses some epithets to describe the book
here («yellow and crinkly» pages). The children are not happy with the form of the book
(«what a waste»); they are used to electronic ones. They begin to read the book and
realize that it is about school.
Here we come to the second part. This is a retrospection to an episode of Margie’s
life. In this part, we can read Margie’s inner thoughts. In addition, we learn something
about the construction of mechanical teachers. In this case author uses epithets, too, and
with the help of them we learn that Margie does not like her mechanical teacher that
much («large and black and ugly»). We can see that the «most hated» part of studying for
Margie was writing homework out in a punch code for the mechanical teacher.
Therefore, it is clear that this «new» system of education is boring for children and
cannot be compared with the old one on this point.
The third part is circling around the discussion of differences between present time
schools and old ones. The children argue whether a real teacher can know as much as
mechanical, one does or not. This part consists mostly of dialogues with rare insertions of
the author’s speech with the help of which he describes characters’ manner of speaking
and acting («looked ... with very superior eyes», «screamed with laughter»).
The forth part makes the characters and we go down to earth again. The children need
to go to their mechanical teachers. The magic and the mystery of the old book is gone.
However, sitting in the schoolroom, Margie fantasizes about regular schools and
teachers, about laughing, mutual help and support. Moreover, these epithets prove that
the action take place in future when nobody knows about old types of books. To describe
Tommy’s attitude to Margie the author uses epithets. Tommy looks at Margie with
“superior eyes”. Using this stylistic device the author shows us that Tommy thinks him to
be cleverer than Margie does.
The story also contains many hyperboles and similar. Tommy says that “their father
knows as much as his teacher”. However, Margie does not believe him; she cannot even
imagine that somebody can be as clever as a mechanical teacher can.
The gradation “large and black and ugly” is used to emphasize that a mechanical
teacher is just a robot not a real man.
The vocabulary of the extract is stylistically neutral. Some slang words are used to
create the atmosphere of real life, to make readers believe that there are real two little
children talking to each other.
There are some stylistic devices, which are used quite often in the story. First, they
are epithets. Secondly, it is necessary to mention that the author uses an italic font to
point out some words: «his grandfather», «centuries ago». Colloquial words are also of
frequent use («gee», «I betcha», «I guess», «stupid»). They make the story more true to
life. Besides, the author makes up a new word – «telebook» – to name an invention of the
future.
This story makes the reader think about the teaching process of nowadays. Having
read the text, one may ask oneself, «What is better for us? Regular teachers or
mechanical ones? Moreover, why? » Of course, everybody should find an answer by
himself or herself. Personally, I suppose that a regular teacher is much better, although
we live in the era of informational technologies. In the story, we can observe that Margie
is bored; she is in need of real interaction between people. She is only a child, and it is
not a soulless machine that can give her motivation and help her to become a great person
in the future.

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