Speculations before the origin of the universe

For this week, I read the short story All at One Point from the Cosmicomics collection by Italo Calvino. The story seems to focus on the origin of the universe before the big bang theory. The author focuses on a time before the big bang when everything was compressed all together into one tiny atom. Personally, I think that the author personifies the characters that, atomically together, form the universe. Throughout the story, the narrator seems to interact with other characters as if they were humans. Through their interaction it seems to me as if they were living in a neighborhood; the locals, a single house keeper and the new neighbors. The cleaning woman does not have anything to clean and spends her time gossiping, and the new neighbors that act like they own the place by doing what they like and are disliked by the locals. The author is emphasising on the fact that the universe is so small that it cannot even hold a single grain of dust.

I also noticed that in the story the author makes a slight reference to the relationship between different countries in our world. Throughout history, tension exists between many countries, similarly to the interactions between the characters. For example most of them tend to keep to themselves, and would only interact with each other after being well acquainted. Furthermore, they tend to argue with each other constantly over petty reasons. Also, how the newer group, referred to as “immigrants”, were being alienated and prejudiced against them for superficial reasons.

In my opinion, I found the content of this reading extremely unusual. Especially the names were weirdly spelled and found them unpronounceable. I found it hard to follow up with the different characters because of their complicated names.