Monday, March 31, 2014
Who is Alquist?
The end of Act 2 caught me by surprise when only Alquist was spared from death, but because he was forced to labor over test tubes searching for Rossum’s formula alone for years, maybe he wasn’t actually spared from death, but instead doomed to an even worse fate. The robots claimed that because Alquist worked with his hands like robots did, he deserved to live and he should be used to their advantage. This was especially troubling for me because before this point in the play I could think of no exceptionally distinctive characteristics that Alquist obtained. The name Alquist is composed of “al” derived from “alder” and “quist” an old spelling of “kvist” meaning twig. The alder tree has medicinal properties that native americans exploited for survival purposes which include treating poison oak, insect bites, skin irritation, lymphatic disorders and even tuberculosis. This makes sense when considering that Alquist was the last human left at the factory, and therefore left to cure the human race, ideally by eradicating the robots and reestablishing humans as the dominant species on earth. This of course doesn’t happen and instead Alquist is the only human left on the planet making it entirely impossible for the human race to recover, but towards the very end Alquist cleverly notices the level of compassion that robot Helena and Primus demonstrate for each other. He knows that these feelings are what will allow the robot race to continue and the manufacturing process is trivial compared to the power of nature. This is why the character of Alquist plays such an important role in demonstrating how Capek is warning the reader against the human quest to obtain a godlike status. As Alquist exclaims at the beginning of act 3 “O night what purpose do you serve? There are no lovers, no dreams. O nursemaid, dead as a sleep without dreams, you no longer hallow anyone’s prayers. O mother of us all, you don’t bless a single heart smitten with love. There is no love” (72), we are finally able to understand the ramifications of tampering with natural order.
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I also found it very interesting that Alquist was the only human that the robots spared. In a world where there was no need for humans to suffer through labor, Alquist was unique in that he still genuinely enjoyed building with his hands. Capek’s motive to create the character Alquist most likely stemmed from his own views about technological progress. Many of Capek’s works served to demonstrate that industrialism can have destructive tendencies. Of all of the humans in the play, Alquist was the most aware of the destructive implications of the robots and goes as far as to say “the real crime was producing the robots in the first place” when faced with the situation of the militarizing robots (53). Alquist was also especially uneasy about progress and reveals to Helena in the first act that building helps him cope with his uneasiness. With his work R.U.R., I believe that Capek was trying to make the point that while technological progress may solve some problems it will inevitably create new ones it we let it go too far. By choosing Alquist to be the last human standing, I believe that Capek was further insinuating that a cautious view of progress is one that may spare human lives.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I too could not have predicted Alquist’s survival, I did recognize certain characteristics in him that the others in the play were lacking. He believes creating the robots was a mistake and does not share Domin’s obsession to make humans the masters of another race. He argues with Domin saying, “the real crime was producing Robots in the first place!” (53). He recognizes the greed in Domin that Domin fails to see within himself. Alquist also is quite unlike the other characters in his mannerisms as well. Instead of sitting in an office filling quotas and shipments all day, he is out doing manual labor. He tells Helena how he prays each day for God “to enlighten Domin and all those who err. Destroy their work and help people return to their former worries and labor” (34). Alquist’s actions and opinions on the Robots certainly separate him from the rest of characters, and his survival further separates him as the last remaining hope for humanity.
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