Obviously, the toll that the racist behavior had exacted was heavy. Even to the point of almost blaming his mother for not belonging. This shows how much racism and bullying can affect a child at a young age.

The tone of the narrators voice is very sad and disappointed by the lack of excitement by the others. Also, the racist aspect of the initial conversation definitely played a role in the tone.

This passage is interesting because it gives a cool take into the size of the fish bowl. Also, it makes it seem like the shark is alive in a sense.

The description of the tiger contained great imagery and really allowed the reader to see the tiger in great detail.

To me this means that you can never truly understand others until you experience life from their view. And when you stop making an effort to be conscientious of others you fail to understand who they are. This deeply relates to modern day and understanding others who are not like you.

My interpretation of this is that the heptapods are telling the population that they have everything they need to succeed. Showing them that they no longer need the heptapods and they can be on their own now. This would explain the passage about the baby being born. The mother, is the heptapods and they have raised their baby, the population, and they are now ok to be on their own. After years of nurturing they have all the tools they need and no longer need the constant guidance of heptapods.

What provoked the heptapods to leave? Did they transfer all the necessary information they needed to in order for the population to survive and thrive? What prompted their departure?

I wish the author put more context in between these two segments of text. At first it is rather confusing as a reader to make contextual jumps like this.

It is interesting that the author names heptapods, "Raspberry" gives it a sense of character and personality. In naming there is a stronger sense of connection between the population and heptapods.

Is this all an act? A performance for the audience, readers? Or is it another facetious term? What exactly was their performance? It all seemed so routine to me.

This feels like another element of difficulty in communication or alternate languages where they are speaking in code. It is very odd the way that their exchange is described. "Spies meeting in public" to me seems sneaky and rather unscrupulous. It makes me wonder what they are actually talking about and if the language I am reading is code for something else?

The author blends science fiction with modern times with the usage of time. I think if the author used an alternate indication of time it would be far too confusing for the reader. A minute in the short story equaling a minute in real time draws simple parallels between modern day and the science fiction component of the story.

There is a large amount of foreshadowing throughout this story. Here she signifies that there will in fact be something monumental that happens. I was under the impression it would be something bad just because of the nature of the passage as "what would happen next" was in no way expected. Foreshadowing is a positive additive to the authors writing, keeping the reader on edge and engaged for what is to come.

This reminds me of a specific transformers movie when a scientist creates a super destructive tool that can destroy the world only so that if he has it they need not worry about someone else having it. But by the end of the film the scientist understands that some things are better off not being understood. In this passage she fears that again with the great power of knowledge, in technology, it can be used with bad intentions.

The heptapods remain superior to this population because only they possess knowledge and information that is unknown to the population. They share this knowledge fleetingly and through "gift" to remain all-knowing and powerful. In society there is a constant debate between which is more powerful money or power. This passage insinuates to me that the author strongly believes knowledge is power and those who posses it are stronger and can control others with what they choose to share in terms of information.

This leads me to believe that a "gift" could be a set of information, a memory once lost or the ability to connect past and future, as she indicated is typically impossible. But the author also tells us that sometimes they already know this information so this also pulls me back into the direction that their meaning of a gift might be a little back handed.

Why is "gift" put in quotations every time? Is this meant to indicate that is a facetious usage of the word gift or that its not actually a gift at all. What is in fact a gift to her? Does it hold the same meaning that it does for us in modern society?

This kind of comes out of nowhere. I would have liked the author to add more build up. Why did she know it was going to be her last? This leaves the audience rather confused because there is nothing that clues us in on why this would be her last.

This reminds me a lot of coding. There communication is very similar to a way in which we would speak to or command a computer to act. It is long and arduous compared to the simple "let's begin" this shows again, how complex it can be when things must be translated rather than communicating directly in one fashion. Although in this instance the meaning was not miscommunicated it still was far more difficult than the original meaning and takes much more time to communicate.

In reading I found that this statement meant that her memories exist in segments and are rather compartmentalized, she experiences life in whats behind and what is in the future and feels no connection between the two. This is a rather interesting take that "there is no real combustion" because most people live in a mixture between what has happened and what will happen whereas she feels no connection between past and future, due to Heptapod B