I enjoyed the story The Proud Robot because it seemed more realistic than the other stories we’ve read because the reactions that Ghallager and Joe have to each other seem more realistic with bursts of emotion than the well thought out philosophical arguments that characters from other stories have with each other. This story also seemed like it was kind of like a detective story where Ghallager was trying to figure out what he made Joe for and how he could get him to do what he wanted, and he used a sort of philosophical reasoning in order to see into Joe’s subconscious.
It seemed ironic that after trying for the whole story and trying over and over again to find out what exactly Joe’s purpose was that it turned out that Joe was only a sophisticated can opener. I thought that this gave the most prominent message of the story, where Joe and Ghallager represent humanity attempting to figure out what the purpose of we as humans and individuals are and in the end the author is trying to say that our purpose is really insignificant. It’s kind of a dark thought.
The message on subconscious was kind of confusing and I didn’t completely understand what he was saying. When Joe hypnotized himself he was able to experience new senses, so I assume that when we loose our reasoning and live only in our subconscious that we can experience the world in a new and different way with almost limitless knowledge (since this is how Ghallager does his best inventing). Someone commented on how it was confusing that when Ghallager found out Joe’s purpose that Joe became his servant, but Ghallager says that he built into Joe’s subconscious that when this happened that Joe would become his slave and obey him, which makes us question whether our subconscious can also contain parts of us that we cannot control.