The Man in Asbestos by Stephen Leacock

B.com 3nd SEM English  

The Man in Asbestos by Stephen Leacock.

 Summary

 The Canadian author Stephen Leacock's "The Man in Asbestos, An Allegory of the Future" is a story about a modern man who wakes up in the future to find the world to be completely ruled by man and machines.  The characters in this story are the narrator and a man in asbestos. The man in Asbestos is the title character. He is the man whom the narrator meets in the future world. He is wearing an asbestos suit because it is very durable and is good for all seasons. He explains the various achievements of the future world to the narrator. He also compares each of their advancements with that of the narrator’s age.

The Asbestos man takes the narrator out of the museum to the Broadway. There the narrator finds human figures moving to and fro with ‘hairless faces’ and ‘asbestos suits.’ There were no vehicles. The place was soundless. The Asbestos man then describes the features of the new world one by one. At first he shocks the narrator by saying that they have ‘eliminated death’ from this world. Apart from death they have also eliminated disease, food and work. He points out that “disease and death were simply a matter of germs.” They found them one by one and destroyed them. The only fear that they had was the fear of getting ‘broken’ either through accident or by some other means. To avoid such accidents they have banned “all street cars, street traffic, aeroplanes and so on.” So the people of the future world could live forever.

Then he proudly states that they have conquered nature. He calls it the “Great Conquest of Nature.” It is the final victory of man and machines. Chemical Food came first. Agriculture and natural food ceased. In the future world, instead of eating food, the people took a concentrated pill every year. That was all that was needed. They used the digestive apparatus for other uses such as filling it with education. There was no fashion in the world of the Asbestos man. They used ‘Asbestos Clothes.’ In one year humanity made clothes to last forever. The conquest of nature also meant that there was no more work. All the work was done by machines. People had no work at all in the future world.

Next they killed the changes of the climate. They changed the composition of the sea. As a result the sky was cloudless and grey in colour. There was no telegraph, telephone or transportation. The people of the future world regarded all this as useless. When work stopped and commerce ended, and food was needless and the weather killed, it was foolish to move about. Education was acquired through a surgery, so it was known as “surgical education.” It was a simple operation which was done by opening the side of the skull and engrafting into it a piece of prepared brain. Moreover there was no newspaper as there was no war, death or accident. The men and women had similar appearance with ‘hairless faces’ and ‘ageless looks.’ The asbestos man also mentions that he has not heard the word ‘children’ for at least a century. 

This shows that along with death they have also eliminated birth in the future world.In short, the world of the Asbestos man is a world in which in which life has lost all meaning and charm.