The Cold Equations, By Tom Godwin

In the short story “The Cold Equations,” by Tom Godwin, shows that love for your family is opposing love for oneself, because in her rush to see family, she ends up getting sentenced to die, and Marilyn embraces that she’s going to die, with sadness, anger, and fear at first and then eventually embraces it with strength.

In The “Cold Equation” by Tom Godwin, Marilyn starts of the story as a girl who jumps on a ship to go see her brother who is in war. She is quickly haunted by the news that she will have to sacrifice her life to save the lives of other people. Through Marilyn’s actions and words, she could be described as oblivious, loving, and courageous.

For myself, the most exciting part to read in the short story "The Cold Equations" was in the very first part when the pilot knew that someone was hiding in the supply closet and he knew he was "not alone" the first two words of the story had me hooked. From here on he continued explaining that a tiny white hand on a gauge let him face the reality that a person who was not supposed to be on the tiny EDS ship was hiding in a supplies closet.At this point, you are as scared as the pilot as to what is in there especially with this line, "There was something in the supplies closet across the room, it was saying, some kind of a body that radiated heat." Consequently, the pilot has a dialogue with himself about the expectations of an EDS pilot and

The Cold Equations is a short story written by Tom Godwin. Barton is a character on a different planet and is an EDS pilot. EDS’ are used for emergencies and other calls that are urgent. In Barton’s case he is flying towards Wooden, which is a planet, where six men have been stranded, struck with a fever that could kill them without the right serum, which they did have but with their luck, it was destroyed by a tornado. Barton’s mission is to fly back to earth, get the serum and then fly to Wooden. The only problem with the EDS is that it is very small and stores just enough fuel to get to the destination and back. Any other mass weight which was not calculated for could crash the plane. While Barton was

In this generation most people live and make choices for themselves. It is abnormal for real emotion to be shown much. In the books Fahrenheit 451 (F451) by Ray Bradbury and “Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin they both relate to our society now in their own ways with how people convey the way they feel. But there is an imbalance in the way the society feels and acts upon others. While some differences in these two books are prominent, the similarities are astonishing. In the books it is apparent that the citizens in F451 are dehumanized, or deprived of positive human qualities and show a major lack of emotion. In Cold Equations we capture the true feelings of the characters. These books both relate in the way that they have a consistent theme which can be categorized as the death of innocent people. Finally, both books respectively capture hard decisions that have to be made by the characters.

This story should be the story of a hero. The story of Whip Whitaker, an excellent pilot, who with a malfunctioning airline jet in a uncontrollable dive to earth and with eminent death quickly approaching, remained calm and managed to control his own anxiety and direct others to execute an intuitive and intelligent plan that allowed him to fly and crash land the jet in a controlled manner as to minimize the loss of life. Out of 102 souls on the flight only 6

Short story writes usually use capturing information to grab the reader’s attention. Specifically by changing their mind set with gripping stories. Godwin’s short story takes place where tough decisions had to be made, and they don’t always have to be good ones either. In the short story “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin the central theme has to do with sacrifice and it is being shown through irony and foreshadowing.

Our group selected the short story “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin as a basis for our play. This play is about a girl named Marilyn who was ejected from the Stardust aircraft. Our group selected this play so we could create an exciting, interesting, and a suspenseful alternative ending. We titled our alternative ending The Slightly Warmer Equation because of the happy and light storyline that our play has in comparison to the dark and dreadful storyline of “The Cold Equations.” The reason we did this was so we could convey to our audience that Marilyn was getting closer to solving her own life equation and living happily ever after. The main conflict in the play is that Marilyn has floated onto the Octagon spacecraft belonging to aliens. She is then discovered by an alien named Malron, her life is put in jeopardy, and to her surprise she begins to have romantic feelings for him. By the end of the play Marilyn accepts her feelings for Malron and they live happily ever after. Our play uses the conventional elements of drama by having a clear setting, an identifiable protagonist and antagonists, a pyramidal pattern, and an entertaining and positive storyline for our audience.

In the short story “The Cold Equation” by Tom Godwin, the author describes the internal struggle of one pilot and what he has to do and what he wants to do but ultimately knows that he must compromise his moral to do what he must. To start off, the story begins by explaining what life is like out in the Frontier, how dangerous it is and how harsh rules have to be because it is so dangerous. The story is about a pilot of an Emergency Dispatch Ship who finds a stowaway on his ship and debates what he will do; he knows that he must kill her otherwise seven other people will die along with her, including him. He does everything he can to delay the outcome and to possibly change it but ultimately knows the girl must die.

The debate over fate and free will is a long going discussion among people. Some believe that their choices have been planned out for them, while others believe that their destiny is in their hands and they can forge their own path. In Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” this idea is explored when a girl named Marilyn Cross stowaways on a ship. Once she is discovered, Marilyn learns that the ship she has chosen to hide out on has limited fuel and can only take a single person. This person must be the ship’s captain, Barton, who must deliver serum to a sick colony on a nearby planet and also return hom. No matter how hard either of them try, it seems the inevitable is only delayed. The cold equations that run the ship’s maintenance call for

In the short story ¨The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, the author portrays that the two thematic tensions working against each other is human sacrifice and innocents. Human sacrifice overcomes innocents when other lives are on the line. In the story a young girl trying to visit her brother picks the wrong ship to be a stowaway on and gets caught. As a result, she has to be sacrificed in order for the pilot to save 6 sick people on a different planet. First off, even though the girl is innocent she, has to be sacrificed because if she doesn't get off the ship they wouldn't be able to deliver the medicine to the 6 sick people on the other planet.

In the story “The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, Marilyn makes one single decision that can affect her future forever. There is no telling what the future will hold. In the beginning, Marilyn desperately wishes to see her brother, so she sneaks onto a EDS to take her to him: “'Why did you stow away on this EDS?'...'I wanted to see my brother'"(Godwin 4). Marilyn’s future changed for the worst because of the consequences she will experience by being a stow away. Next, by deciding to sneak onto the EDS Marilyn will have to die because of the law. “'They’re waiting for you to kill me, aren’t they? They want me dead, don’t they?'"(Godwin 9). When she hears that her consequence will be death she came to the realization of how her decision truly affected

The story “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, shows the central thematic tension of one's guilt being the lesser to one’s responsibility, and this is resolved by the responsibility of the main characters overcoming his guilt and ending the life of a girl. The story starts off in an EDS spacecraft, and the main character is all alone doing his job, flying the ship. Soon the main character realizes there was someone in the supplies closet, but sadly the narrator would have to send that person out into space since he didn’t have enough fuel to make it to his destination if they were onboard. The main character found out that the other person was a girl and she was only 18, trying to get to her brother who worked on Woden, but the girl didn’t realize that she was on the path to death.

In the story “Beware of the Dog” Roald Dahl uses the pilot’s thoughts and feelings as well as his actions to convey that heroism and courage can sometimes be expressed by facing rather than avoiding an internal struggle. At this point of the story, the pilot is in a hospital battling the thought of being captured. This thought eventually overwhelms his sanity causing him to try and find the truth about his surroundings. Dahl describes the pilot’s thoughts and feelings by stating, “Quickly the doubt and the fear grew so that he became restless and angry, and when he touched his forehead with his hand, he found that it was damp with sweat.” At this moment the pilot is having difficulty expressing his feelings and becomes impatient with every

In many stories, a large part of the theme is found in the lesson. In the short stories "The Cold Equations", "The Fatalist", "The Piece of String" and "Trap of Gold", lessons are a key part of the four themes. For example, in "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin, a girl named Marilyn boards a ship that is designed for emergencies only. The ship carries only enough fuel to for one pilot and the cargo. “To himself and her brother and parents she was a sweet-faced girl in in her teens; to the laws of nature she was x, the unwanted factor in a cold equation.”