“The Persistence of Vision” short story’s central theme focuses on the near future, which Varley demonstrates via the eyes of the unknown, forty-seven-year-old man dissatisfied with the status of the United States. The economics and ecosystem are in a gradual downhill trajectory, employment is miserable, society tends to fracture, and the land’s condition worsens each day. As a result, he abandoned his city life and decided to move, intending to trudge to San Francisco and catch a boat to Japan. Nevertheless, as he travels across New Mexico, he finds a unique commune that will transform his life.
As a result of a German measles outbreak, a generation was raised in New Mexico with a highly abnormal number of deaf and blind newborns. Nevertheless, because of the goodwill of one woman, many people have been brought to a living commune of the most unusual dimensions in the Navajo desert and reared as farmers in a sustainable society. “I still didn’t believe that they were all deaf and blind. It didn’t seem possible,”- the main character claimed when reaching the community (Varley 629). In the story, the man worries about how he will communicate with these people; nonetheless, one woman makes him understand, for instance: “by pointing to the building, making eating motions with an imaginary spoon, and touching the number on her watch- that supper was served in an hour” (Varley 640). The community members communicated via physical touch: “If you can’t stand touching, you’re not going to like it here” (Varley 643). They spoke via their bodies; any part of the body in contact with another was considered communication.
Despite being deaf and blind, the community members devised a survival system. For example, they never went hungry or cold since there was enough sunshine year-round to power the pumps and food cycle and heat their residences. They had never laid eyes and ears on one other; the group knew each other perfectly. The community was an organism, a new way of connecting that appeared to be working. The fundamental premise is utopianism since these unique people resolved most human nature problems, including pettiness, jealousy, and possessiveness. Essentially, the character chooses to return to the community and becomes blind and deaf.
The same idea of the importance of belonging to the community was expressed in “The Organization Man”. Whyte states that human lives as a social unit; individuals are isolated and worthless by themselves. They become worthwhile when they work with others since by sublimating themselves in the group, they contribute to the creation of a whole. Whyte claims that “science has proved the group is superior to the individual” (Whyte 95). During this time, social scientists suggested that man was happiest when he belonged, and that belongingness was one of the most significant traits of a prospective employee. The cooperative community was extolled above the individual in this Social Ethic (McKay & McKay). Because if a group had a leader, all members’ perspectives were not equally respected. Nonetheless, according to Whyte, these notions were deadly to individual identity and inventiveness. Whyte was not utterly hostile to groups or even to conformity in general. He advocated for individualism within the context of organizational life. Therefore, the primary concept is that there should be a compromise between individuality and belongingness, personal creativity and community togetherness.
Works Cited
McKay, Brett, and Kate McKay. “Revising the Organization Man.” The Art of Manliness, 2021, Web.
Varley, John. The Persistence of Vision. Mercury Press, Inc., 1978.
Whyte, William H. The Organization Man. Simon and Schuster Inc., 1956.