Weekly Short Story: Unaccompanied Sonata by Orson Scott Card

Sometimes I come across a story whose intended meaning may be very different from what I get from it...science fiction writer Orson Scott Card's 1979 short story Unaccompanied Sonata is a case in point.  It's a part of the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF (DAW Books), but you can probably get access to it elsewhere...

The setting is Earth at an unspecified time in the far distant future.  A utopia of sorts has settled upon humanity, with children rigorously tested as to their inclinations and talents from infancy until they turn two...and then assigned life-long roles in which they will most be "happy" and content, productive members of a society that no longer accepts discontent and violence among its members. Christian Haroldsen is born into this world and quickly is revealed through his many tests to be a musical prodigy...and then taken from his parents and sent into isolation in the woods where his musical development will be completely original and unaffected by the works of others...he is now one of the Makers.  There are other people who have been tested and assigned the role of Listeners...from time to time they will visit nearby and listen to the music Christian has made and plays on the complex keyboard instrument provided him.  But one day a Listener slips Christian some music by Bach...his own music slightly changes as a result, catching the attention of another group: the Watchers.  When confronted with this "violation", the story turns down a darker path...making an already suspect "utopia" in effect a very disturbing dystopia...

Unaccompanied Sonata resurrects the age-old notion of people being sorted into classes or castes in which they are expected to live out the rest of their lives...the testing early on supposedly places them in areas in which they will thrive, but are people really like that?  Don't we all diverge from time to time and rebel a bit?  And since when does whatever one is inclined toward as a baby determine their life's course?  Then again, this system does seem to curb society away from war and violence...but why not instead just implement a very intensive universal education of nonviolence and positive interaction among the very young instead of this battery of aptitude tests?  So I'm consequently somewhat dissatisfied with Card's tale...but it did remind me of a trend I've noticed in today's real world...

I like to study foreign languages, although I'm not much of a linguist.  When folks encounter me studying out in public...say in a coffee shop...I often get a quizzical reaction and the automatic question: what am I going to do with it?  The same goes whenever I'm "caught" doing math problems out of a textbook or workbook, as if I am somehow operating outside their notion of the kind of person I am "supposed" to be.  It all seems a bit silly to me...I'm enjoying the challenge of progressively learning new things for their own sake without a special agenda in mind.  But to certain others, just studying in some fields in itself bothers them...there has to be an end game to it all.  The screwed-up utopia in Unaccompanied Sonata is controlled by powerful elements in society who have taken upon themselves the assignment of what people are allowed to engage in...even to the point of what music they can listen to. That "end game" becomes the driving, imperative force with undue pressure placed upon children as their futures are laid out for them by the tests they take, after which they are place in specialized areas beyond which they are NEVER to venture.  Not cool, I say...as R.E.M.'s lyricist Michael Stipe wrote in their hit song Losing My Religion, "Life is bigger...it's bigger than you, and you are not me": let us all be vigilant and watch out that well-intentioned social engineering never progressively supplant our precious liberties...