Banks seems more incredulous that the person her daughter is is the same person that she raised: "I'll be mute with amazement. It will remind me, again, that you won't be a clone of me you can be wonderful, a daily delight, but you won't be someone I could have created myself" (108). She reflects on how much power she will have on the events of her daughter's life: "What I'll think is that you are clearly, maddeningly not me. Banks also thinks about the differences between mothers and daughters. She compares the experiences early in the story, when she tells her daughter that being called in to analyze heptapod language was one of the most momentous calls of her life, following the call in which she is notified that her daughter has passed away.ĭr. In this way, being a mother is similar to the experience of conducting linguistic fieldwork on the heptapods' language.
She understands motherhood as a life-changing experience that completely shifts her understanding of herself. Banks tells her daughter the story of her life, she reflects on the meaning of motherhood. However, she knows she will never get the chance to do so in person: "the right time to do that would be when you're ready to have children of your own, and we'll never get that chance" (91).Īs Dr. Banks is one of a group of linguists tasked with learning the heptapod language. Banks wants to tell her daughter about the night she is conceived as well as all of the events that have led to that night-namely, that a race of aliens (called "heptapods") visit earth, and Dr. She is able to "remember" the future because she is fluent in Heptapod B, which requires a simultaneous consciousness (seeing events as all-at-once) rather than a sequential consciousness (seeing events as one-at-a-time or cause-and-effect).
Banks knows that her daughter will exist and what will happen in her daughter's life-including her daughter's death at the age of 25. Louise Banks narrates the events of " Story of Your Life," she addresses her daughter, who has not been born yet.
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