Chiasmus.

What struck me as odd was the psychological changes of Dr. Gall’s robots two years after the robots revolution. Radius, the first leader of the robots, in his conversation with Helena, expressed his discontent for human beings who could only “give orders – utter empty words” (p. 37). The feelings of discontent, of dissatisfaction with the way humans treat the robots, and the sense of superiority, which Dr. Galls have installed within the next generation of machines, led to the demise of the human civilization in this dystopian society. One can recount the words of the character Nana to think for themselves whether or not the downfall of human kind was a direct result of their total blasphemy against God as they attempted to create robots in their own image for their own purpose: “churning out these machine-made dummies is against the will of God.” (p. 27)

Regardless, excessive gluttony and greed of humanity for everything have left them with nothing, reduced them to nothing, because with the introduction of robots, the world for men became void of struggles, and men became void of progress. Infertility, a sense of anachronism, in addition to the inevitable total annihilation of the human race but for the one Dr. Alquist, are the prices a very angry Mother Nature forced humanity to pay.

So as men fell, robots rose and took the place of their previous rulers, but only for so long; their pre-decided inability to procreate, which still remained unsolved at the end of the play, proved that in due time they would meet their makers just the same. This course of event was to be expected. However, what intrigued me was the way they responded, or rather, reacted to this circumstance, as if out of fear and desperation. Confronting the weary Dr. Alquist two years after the incidents that took place at Rosssum factory, Radius, Damon and other robots, in an ironic turn of events, became the ones to give orders and utter empty words. Upon knowing that Dr. Alquist was yet to make any progress in making anymore robots, this commitee of robots took turn and pleaded the doctor to keep on going. “Name your price. We will give you anything… Teach us to make Robots… Hear us, oh, hear us! People are our fathers… Pass the legacy of people on to us. Tell us the secret of life… Do experiments. Look for the formula.” (p.76-77). The table has turned. The chiasmus was complete. Robots, in the image of their creators the human race, were made and were doomed.

In the final scene, the robots Helena and Primus ran off from Dr. Alquist, leaving the battered man behind full of hope that “life will not perish.” (p.84) But this prophecy could never come true. If “life” was to be defined as an experience that can be perceived by the mind, this definition, just like the prophecy, is a selfish thought, as the mind is merely a speck of dust in the sand-lock of the universe whose core lies in the duality of entities, not in the singularity of an eccentric one. Admittedly Helena and Primus were then capable of feelings, but what was the use of such emotions if they could not be sustained in generations after generations of these robotic neo-humans due to their inability to procreate? What, then, is this prophecy but simply gibberish talk of a mad man in the remains of the day?