Dialing Our Death: A Critical Response to Stephen King’s Cell

While Stephen King’s Cell might be about zombies, the 2006 novel is also a clever commentary on America’s reliance on technology. King’s setup is that, on the afternoon of October 1, a strange â€Å"pulse† is broadcast across American cell phone networks. The pulse, when heard by people on their cells, immediately renders cell-phone users into murderous, zombie-like creatures. These people, known as â€Å"Phoners,† are no longer human. The few people unaffected by the pulse, called â€Å"Normies,† attempt to fight back for survival.King hints heavily that our dependence upon technology will be our undoing. The central characters’ struggle to survive runs secondary to King’s technophobic message. The plot is effectively more important than the narrative it supports. Most of the attention is paid to the pulse itself. The rampaging zombies are given a reason to exist: their brains have been literally â€Å"scrambled like a skillet of eggs† (43). Their violent and gory actions are symbolic of what King feels our world is becoming.Even if King’s doesn’t think using cell phones and visiting websites will lead to apocalypse or rampages, perhaps he is (at the very least) suggesting that we are becoming just as mindless. When the pulse strikes, the â€Å"Phoners† were connected via network. Everyone affected has been linked together. The danger, King suggests, is that our shrinking world is not necessarily a good thing. To King, cell phones and the Internet have ceased to be modes of transmitting information. Sharing information is less important than swapping videos and songs with friends now, or having conversations while walking through a park.People look like they are talking to themselves. King feels that technology has left us vulnerable. We might not be vulnerable to a zombie-creating â€Å"pulse,† but we are certainly vulnerable to losing our sense of identity and humanity . We are giving ourselves, little by little, over to technology. In Cell, the mindless â€Å"Phoners† are soon organized into â€Å"Flocks,† which move around in patterns very much like migrating birds. This underscores King’s central fear: the marriage of technology and biology. He seems to be calling for a world that exists offline.In his book The Soft Edge, media philosopher Paul Levinson agrees that the fundamental nature of technology closely recalls mankind. There are legitimate concerns to consider as we move toward an ever-increasing dependence upon the technologies available to us. Levinson states that â€Å"the wisdom of nature is not always good for us, insofar as it accommodates hurricanes, drought, famine, earthquake, and all manner of destructive occurrences† (150). Nature’s tendency toward destruction and collapse, also known as entropy, is mirrored in technology and, very clearly, in Cell.Like nature itself, destruction is part of t he nature of technology, King believes. Levinson questions whether technology can have things similar to â€Å"ugly ragweed,† which must be monitored and controlled. He asks â€Å"whether ragweed can be controlled without suppressing the beauty and value that emerges right next to it, untended† (Levinson 151). His vision is aligned with King’s—technology has the capacity to destroy—but he feels that it can be controlled. Technological systems will not revolt against us, as they do in Cell, but they must be actively watched.Cell paints a stark portrait of society on the brink of collapse—one that people have willingly bought into. In King’s mind, we are ushering ourselves to our own demise, if not our loss of humanity. Something as simple and ubiquitous as a cell phone is turned into a tool of terror. With Cell, King makes us question whether we have established systems for ourselves that are not so much helpful as they are corruptive. His novel is a cautionary tale about where we are heading as a civilization. When we next answer the phone, King suggests the fate of our own humanity may be calling.