Bicentennial Man Themes

The Bicentennial Man: Themes and Subjects from Philosophy

The Bicentennial Man is a story of a man...or rather a robot, who slowly develops human emotion and becomes a man. The story follows the life of Andrew, a robot manufactured for home use to be a helper, but something is very different about him. Andrew has something different in the way he was created, and thus has the ability to perceive emotion and actually has creative processes. This causes him to seek out human life, love, and the wonders it ensues, thus eventually becoming human himself. It provides a very powerful insight into the mind of humans from a unique perspective, and it delves into two very big philosophical topics: The idea that humans are defined by relationships, …show more content…
The first really apparent aspect of this was portrayed, by Richard. As mentioned previously, Richard went on to teach Andrew, for this was his goal in life. He saw it as his duty to mentor Andrew, seeing as how he was very different and had potential. If Richard had gone astray from this and used Andrew strictly as a resource instead of acting on his own compassion, the “play” would have gone very different. Continuing on, the actions of Andrew, although conflicted with self interest, functioned on the idea of destiny and his role in the human life. He acted pretty much to discover life through a new set of eyes as well as better the entirety of the robot kind. His decision to be free so he could, “seek out others like [his] kind,” proves this correct. After becoming free, he continues on to create a way to preserve life almost entirely, and even as previously stated, becomes a man. All of these scenarios contradict the meaning of, “Life is a play,” because Andrew’s role was to simply be an aid in a household setting. By breaking these boundaries and setting goals, having ambition, and shattering expectations, he contributed more to the world and to a happy heartfelt life than he would have if he had simply played his role. Considering he had lived according to the script, his family would not have succeeded, the world would be lacking very vital medical intelligence, Portia would not have found supreme …show more content…
The movie, however does disagree with the idea that we should live our lives according to a script and always play our assigned role in the world. Both of these subjects coincide together in such a way to present such a difficult topic with ease, that it is nearly impossible to deny. Andrew’s relationships helped him build connections and create thought patterns that would progress him to being completely and totally human, and going against his initial protocol of being robot did this as well as propel the human species past unfathomable