Doctor Scott represented the rational mentality of a man. He, too, was a man of science but had no unhealthy obsession like his patient, Klausner. He was a very curious man who wanted to know about the sound machine by just looking at the intricate box. He was patient enough to listen to Klausner’s rambles on the phone when he requested him to come straightaway. Though a man of rational thought, he was not assertive and was also scared of Klausner at the very end, so much so that he ended up applying iodine on the tree.

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The sound machine falls under the genre of science fiction. The story has an amateur scientist, Klausner, who believes that there are sounds that are so low pitched or so high-pitched that one can’t perceive them and he invents a machine where he can convert odd inaudible sounds to an audible frequency in order to hear them. The sound machine is the main symbol in the story, for the scientific advancements it has been occurring against nature. Klausner is experimenting on the sound machine to study how the plants feel pain when they are cut. It is not scientifically proven, as machine doesn’t exactly exists in real life where one can hear sounds created by the plants, but it is indeed remarkable how Klausner attends that level of perfection when he could actually hear the sounds of the plants when they are cut.

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The theme of appearance versus reality runs throughout the story. Klausner, who at first seems to be a dedicated scientist working hard on his invention, the sound machine until it turned out to be an obsession. He is obsessed with his fact that he can indeed hear the sounds created by plants, when they are in pain, through the machine. Klausner is considered eccentric but harmless where it is at the end, when the doctor refuses Klausner’s silly proposal, the latter strikes up a menacing pose with his axe, showing that he can be violent when needed. Klausner is sad for all the pain caused on nature, yet he is the one who keeps on inflicting pain on plants to prove his hypothesis, throughout the story.

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On seeing the fly, Klausner remarked to the doctor that one might wonder what sort of noise that fly was making. But no no could hear it. The fly could have been whistling like mad on a very high note or barking or croaking or singing a song as it was possible since the fly, too, has a throat and a mouth. Yet one has no idea what sounds a fly made.

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