Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet

“Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet” alerts readers to the dangers of climate change and its eventual consequences for the earth and humanity. The story’s title clarifies that the rampant capitalistic industrialization perpetuated by its planet’s inhabitants has led to their extinction.

The story is a parable, a literary device similar to an analogy or metaphor where a simplified narrative carries a moral lesson. Atwood’s lesson is multifaceted, touching on individual issues such as faith, rationalization, greed, denial, and conformity, and on social structures such as industrialization, capitalism, and religion. At its core, this story is about the importance of taking care of the natural world.

During the narrative, the relationship between humans and the natural world changes dramatically. In the first age, humans are connected to the earth and treat it with respect; in return, it remains fertile and ripe, like a delicious fruit: “We smelled the earth and rolled in it; its juices ran down our chins” (Paragraph 2). At this time, birds, fish, and other animals thrive. The world is chaotic and life-bearing. This version of the planet contrasts with the one in the fourth age, when deserts have killed off the earth’s ability to produce: The planet has grown “tidy, because there were no weeds […] nothing that crawled” (Paragraph 6). Whereas before, the number associated with the planet was “millions,” now the people worship the number “zero” (Paragraphs 1, 6).

The movement here is from pathos to logos, or from an emotional, creative, natural world to one of cold, empty, ordered logic. However, the logic that praises deserts is a nihilism that results in the complete annihilation of all life on the planet: “there was no land left to grow food” (Paragraph 5). Rationalization disguised as human ingenuity leads to the end of the species.