I, Robot: Robbie Summary & Analysis

Robbie and Gloria are playing hide and seek together in their yard. After Robbie finds Gloria easily, Gloria accuses him of peeking. She asks him to give her a ride on his back, but he is hurt by the accusation. She tries to get him out of his bad mood by hugging him, then by threatening to cry if he didn’t. Robbie ignores her, but she plays her trump card, telling him that if he doesn’t give her a ride, she won’t tell him anymore stories. He quickly places her on his shoulders and runs around. Gloria is delighted, and pretends she is riding an “air-coaster.”

After their ride, Gloria begins to recount the story of Cinderella to a rapt Robbie until Mrs. Weston, Gloria’s mother, calls out to her to come back inside. Robbie carries Gloria back to the house. Mrs. Weston scolds Gloria, saying that she’s been calling her, and is frustrated that she and Robbie forgot it was lunch time. Mrs. Weston sends Robbie away, telling him not to come back until she calls for him. Gloria begs her mother to let him stay, so that she can finish the story, but her mother refuses. Robbie sulks away.

Later that afternoon, Mrs. Weston approaches Mr. Weston. She vents her frustrations about Robbie, saying that she doesn’t want it to take care of Gloria anymore. She says, “It has no soul, and no one knows what it may be  thinking. A child just isn’t made to be guarded by a thing of metal.” Mr. Weston asks when Mrs. Weston’s concerns arose, as Robbie has been watching Gloria for two years now. She explains that at first it was a novelty, it was fashionable, and it took a load off of her. But she now worries that the robot might “go berserk.”

Mr. Weston reminds Mrs. Weston of the First Law of Robotics, that it’s impossible for a robot to harm a human being. A robot would be completely inoperable before it could harm a human being. Mr. Weston adds that it would be difficult to take Robbie away from Gloria. Mrs. Weston explains that this is part of the problem: she refuses to play with other boys and girls, and that’s “no way for a little girl to grow up.” Mr. Weston puts his foot down, saying that they are keeping Robbie until Gloria is older.

Two nights later, Mrs. Weston comes to Mr. Weston and tells him that the neighbors believe Robbie is dangerous. They aren’t letting other kids come near their house out of fear. Mr. Weston says that they are being unreasonable, and repeats that they are not getting rid of Robbie. But over the course of the following week, Mrs. Weston brings up the subject again and again, until Mr. Weston is worn down.

At the end of the week, Mr. Weston takes Gloria to the “visivox show,” and when they return, Gloria finds a new dog greeting her on the porch. She is thrilled, and she goes to find Robbie to show him the dog as well. When she cannot find him in the house, she becomes upset and afraid. Mrs. Weston explains that Robbie just walked away, and that they’ve looked for him, but can’t find him anywhere. She says they’ll keep looking for Robbie, but that Gloria can play with her new dog in the meantime.

Gloria is distraught, refusing to accept the dog. She sobs and wails, and Mrs. Weston tells her that Robbie was only a machine. Gloria screams, “He was a person just like you and me and he was my friend.” Gloria storms off. Mrs. Weston assures Mr. Weston that Gloria will forget her sorrow in a few days.

Over the next few days, Gloria stops crying but remains silent and depressed. Mrs. Weston sends the dog back, and complains to Mr. Weston that Gloria is driving her to a “nervous breakdown.” Mr. Weston suggests that they get Robbie back, but Mrs. Weston refuses. She says that her child will not be brought up by a robot “if it takes years to break her of it.” Mrs. Weston suggests to Mr. Weston that they take her on a month-long trip to New York City to cheer her up.

The Westons go sightseeing around New York City throughout the month, and Gloria does seem happier, though only because she thinks they are there to employ detectives to find Robbie. One day, they go to the Museum of Science and Industry. During a tour, Gloria slips away to follow a sign to the “Talking Robot” on display. The Talking Robot is a large computer kept in a single room. People ask questions of the robot engineer, and those the engineer deems suitable are transmitted to the robot—usually only mathematical questions and calculations like the square of 14 or the current air pressure.

Few people are interested in the robot, but there is a girl in her middle teens (Susan Calvin) who is engrossed in writing an essay while waiting for the engineer to return so that she can ask the robot more questions. Gloria enters the room cautiously, and asks the robot if he has seen Robbie, another robot. The Talking Robot has never been asked a question like this, and has never known that it is part of a group of beings and not simply a single object. It becomes overwhelmed and its coils burn out.

Just then, Mrs. Weston bursts into the room, along with the engineer, who points out that Gloria is not allowed in the room without an attendant. Gloria sobs, saying that she just wanted to ask the robot if it knew where Robbie was, because she has to find Robbie. That night, Mr. Weston proposes an idea to Mrs. Weston: that they take a tour of a robot factory so that Gloria can stop thinking of Robbie as a person and not as a machine. If they can convince her that Robbie was not alive, she might forget him. Mrs. Weston agrees.

Mrs. Weston, Mr. Weston, and Gloria take a tour of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men the next day. Mr. Struthers, the General Manager of the factory, shows them a factory line, how robots are creating more robots. But Gloria is stunned when she spots Robbie working at the factory. She jubilantly sprints toward him, running directly in front of a moving tractor. Mr. Weston tries to move toward Gloria while Mr. Struthers signals to stop the tractor, but the overseers are “only human and it [takes] time to act.” Robbie acts immediately, snatching Gloria out of the way of the tractor. The adults are relieved.

Mrs. Weston immediately whirls on her husband, accusing Mr. Weston of planting Robbie in the factory, because he wasn’t designed for engineering or construction work. Mr. Weston admits that he did so, but tells Mrs. Weston that he didn’t know the reunion would be so violent, and that she can’t send Robbie away again now that he’s saved Gloria’s life. Mrs. Weston sees how happy Gloria is embracing Robbie, and concedes that he can stay.

Susan Calvin then tells the reporter that only four years later, speaking robots were invented, which made all non-speaking models out of date and also made people even more skeptical of robots because they so closely resembled humans. Most governments banned robot use on Earth for anything other than scientific research between 2003 and 2007, and so Robbie and Gloria had to say goodbye after all.

Calvin continues, explaining that she joined U.S. Robots in 2007, when they began to develop the “extra-Terrestrial market.” One of their first missions using the primitive talking models involved sending Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan to Mercury to help build a mining station there, which failed at first. The reporter asks her to speak more about this mission.