34 pages • 1 hour read
Karel ČapekR.U.R.
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1920A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act IAct Summaries & Analyses
Act I Summary
Ten years after the prologue, Domin, Fabry, and Hallemeier enter Helena’s sitting room. They arrange flowers and talk vaguely about problems with robots. When Helena and her nurse Nana enter, the directors leave. Helena and Nana discuss robots having fits and their dislike of and pity for the robots. Domin returns, announces it’s the anniversary of Helena’s arrival, and they—now a married couple—kiss. He gives her gifts from Busman, Fabry, and Gall, and explains that Hallemeier made the flowers. Domin shows Helena his gift—a gunboat outside the window.
Domin says they haven’t gotten mail for a week, and claims to not be worried. Domin and Helena discuss events between the Prologue and the current moment—human workers destroying robots, robots killing people with weapons in defense, and wars fought with robot soldiers run by the governments. Helena wants to run away with the directors. Fabry phones Domin with news that causes him to leave Helena. Domin tells her to not go outside.
Helena sends Nana to find a newspaper, but the only one she can find is a week old. Nana reads about war in the Balkans where robots killed humans. She also reads about how people aren’t being born—there are no human babies. Nana believes this is God’s punishment for the creation of robots. Helena laments human infertility and calls to Alquist from the window.
When he comes in, they talk about taking a trip on the boat. He won’t answer her question about what’s going on. Alquist says he builds when he feels uneasy. She notes that building is all he’s done for years. He admits to being against progress. While he prays for the directors to be forgiven, his faith isn’t as strong as Nana’s. Helena asks why women are not having babies. Alquist believes it is because of the lack of human labor. Humans are living in a paradise or orgy in a world run by robots. As he leaves, he says they’ll meet at 11.
Helena wonders if the flowers are sterile. She asks Nana to summon the robot who had a fit. Meanwhile, Helena calls Gall, asking him to come to her room. When the robot Radius comes in, he says he wants to be the master of people. He refuses to work for humans because they do not work—they only speak. He would rather be killed at the stamping mill than work for people anymore. Because of his education and special programming, Helena writes a note saying he is not to be sent to the stamping mill.
Gall arrives, and Helena explains that Radius had a fit. Gall examines Radius’s pupils and pain reactions before dismissing him. Gall says it was not the fits, which they have named Robot Palsy, but defiance. Helena and Gall wonder if Radius has a soul, and Helena learns that all the robots with special programming are more human. One of these robots, Damon, was sold. Another, Robot Helena, is beautiful and unable to bear children. Gall hypothesizes why human children are no longer being born—nature is upset by robots. Helena and Gall also talk about how people can’t live without robots. After Helena learns that the flowers are sterile, she dismisses Gall.
Helena asks Nana to build a fire in the fireplace, which confuses Nana because it is summer. Helena collects Rossum’s manuscript, which explains how to build robots, and burns it, while asking Nana if it is ok to burn money and inventions. Nana says it is. However, Helena is shocked at her own actions. Nana leaves as Domin, Hallemeier, Gall, and Alquist enter. The men are wearing medals and celebrating. They say Fabry and Busman are at the docks. When Domin asks what burned, Helena says nothing and leaves to get glasses and a bottle.
The directors drink and tell Helena that a boat is coming. They then tell her the revolt of the robots is over. The robots have formed a union, which Domin calls a revolution. The group of humans have been isolated; they have received no telegraphs, and boats have not arrived. However, a mail boat is supposed to arrive that day, back on schedule. Domin admits to buying the gunboat six months earlier and hiding the revolution from Helena. Domin tells her they would use Rossum’s manuscript as leverage if the robots came for their heads. Helena doesn’t tell him that she burned it; she simply insists that they should leave.
Domin says that they can’t leave because they are beginning production of national robots in factories all over. This will cause the robots to hate other nationalities of robots, and they will no longer organize across borders. Helena tries to argue against this, but Fabry arrives and interrupts her. Helena goes to fetch lunch. Fabry says the only mail that arrived is pamphlets about the union of Rossum’s Universal Robots. The pamphlets say that robots are superior to humans, and humans are parasites who need to be killed. Robots plan to continue working after all the humans are dead.
Busman comes in, and Domin says they should get on the gunboat, the Ultimus. Busman mentions there are robots on it, so they abandon the idea. Domin gets out his gun and says he’s going to rescue the people in the power plant. However, they are surrounded. Helena returns with a pamphlet from a robot in the kitchen. Factory whistles and sirens go off; Domin assumes this is the signal to attack since it isn’t noon.
Act I Analysis
Act I develops themes and motifs about sin, Love and Beauty, and The Role of Violence. Violence and the threat of violence permeates the play. Domin carries a revolver in response to the robot uprisings and uses it in the directors’ fight against the robots at the end of Act II. The gunboat that Domin says is a present for Helena also reflects the play’s violent backdrop. Later, the robots turn the boat’s guns on the directors. Robots are a form of technology that use other violent technology, such as guns, against people. Humans mass produce their own means of destruction, the play suggests.
A biblical motif runs throughout the play. It concerns Eden, punishment for sin, and the nature of the soul. Nana is the most religious character. She believes that God has punished humanity for creating robots, a way of playing God, by making women unable to have children. Nana’s mention of God exiling Adam and Eve from Eden is one of many references to the Book of Genesis. Helena, who is infertile, wishes to return to the era in which people lived in Eden, which is referred to as prelapsarian time. She wants to “start life over from the beginning” (31).
In contrast to the sin of playing God, Alquist argues that work, such as building with his hands, is a moral act: “You have no idea what good it does the hands to level bricks, to place them and to tamp them down—” (34). Manual labor is part of living a virtuous life, to Alquist. This discussion of hands foreshadows how he condemns his hands in Act III for dissecting the living robot, Damon.
Čapek develops the theme of Love with the first discussion of Robot Helena. She is one of a select group that Gall created, at Helena’s request, to be more human. Gall questions: “[H]ow can she be so beautiful with no capacity to love?” (39). This references the short story “The Sandman” by E. T. A. Hoffman, in which a man falls in love with a girl he later discovers is an automaton. It also foreshadows the ending of the play, where Robot Helena finally demonstrates the ability to love.
