ROBOTA: The Frightening Visions of Karel Čapek

A Research Paper by Raymond Allen Lutzky for Dr. Evelyn Jenkins-Gunn’s English 12 Regents, Period 6 at Pelham Memorial High School (Originally written March 6, 1998 and edited with afterword October 19, 2026)

“From the technical point of view, man is an inefficient instrument whose emotional and spiritual life only impedes the drive of modern technology.” (Harkins, 1962)

History seldom finds a writer with the vision and the imagination to exceed their own time and go beyond into a future which will become a past for humanity – prophets, whose power of word have mystified the audiences of their time and provided insight for generations to come. Indeed, the works of such “prophets” as H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and even Douglas Adams have shaped human society and changed the way we look at science, the universe, and ourselves – including warnings from the past which mold our future and ward us away from mistakes we might have made, had their words never been put down. This paper will focus on one prophet whose vision was far ahead of its time and whose messages have already been realized: the Czech author Karel Čapek.

Karel Čapek was born in northeastern Bohemia in 1890. Frail and sickly, he was taken under the wing of his compassionate brother, Josef. Both were destined for the arts and found inspiration in each other’s company. They collaborated on projects, ranging from plays to stories, with Josef illustrating his brother’s books. They continued their work together until 1917 when Karel took up a career in journalism.

Čapek’s journalism career would last him the rest of his life. He was fond of speaking his mind and fighting against the oppression of people. In a series of essays, social commentaries and political reviews, he championed the causes of Czech nationalism and liberalism (the post-World War I independence of Czechoslovakia largely influenced his life). He became a strong proponent of the new democratic government, eventually becoming close friends with the country’s first president, Tomáš Masaryk. (Harkins, 1962)

As for so many, World War II spelled doomsday for Karel Čapek and his brother. Together in their writings they expressed strong opinions concerning the emerging governments of countries such as Germany and Italy. Their bitter denunciation of Fascism prompted an “invitation” for them to leave Prague. They chose to stay, nobly defending the cause of freedom and continued the fight they had begun. Karel Čapek died three months before the Nazi invasion of Prague in 1938 (Josef was arrested and died in 1945 a prisoner at Bergen-Belsen). The S.S., unaware of his death, arrived at his home seeking his arrest (Maxfield & Montrose Interactive, 1997). One can’t help but draw the analogy between Karel Čapek’s struggle and that of the great poet Federico García Lorca in Spain, who died two years earlier by firing squad. Both were writers who sought to defend the ideals of freedom and liberty, both were hunted down by the evils they opposed.

Undoubtedly, Karel Čapek’s most famous work is his 1921 drama about a dystopia dominated by machines, called Rossum’s Universal Robots, or simply R.U.R. Although it was Čapek’s least favorite play, it received worldwide acclaim as a literary masterpiece. The word “robot” was first used here and introduced to the world at large to mean something similar to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster – an automaton, consisting of no emotions and little self-thought, whose only purpose is to work for its master and die. The modern vision of a robot is more similar to the leading character from the 1986 movie Short Circuit, a Radio Shack-borne metallic “man” with lenses for eyes, claws for arms, and treads to zoom about on. Čapek’s Robots had no lenses, claws, or treads. They looked like humans, and came in all shapes, sizes, colors and grades. (Čapek, 1923)

The story of R.U.R. takes place on a small island where the central offices of the factory of the titular Rossum’s Universal Robots company exists. The word “robot” was originally thought to be the Czech word for “worker,” but in actuality comes from the word “robota” which was a word used in the Czech language during feudal times. It was a period of time during which the peasantry would leave their own crops and go to work the nobles’ fields. It seemed appropriate by Čapek to use this term for the race of “workers” he would create in his play (it was, in fact, Josef who suggested the word to Karel).

When R.U.R. opens, a few decades beyond 1921 (one could estimate that the period being described lies somewhere in the envisioned 1960’s), the factory had already turned out millions of these improved-upon humans called Robots, following the secret formula of the old scientist, Rossum, who actually cautioned the world against the use of his formula before his death. His words were not heeded by the world at large, and eventually, common sense gave way to capitalism. These Robots are living automats, without souls, desires or feelings. They have no concept of life or death or that they are, in fact, sentient. They are “high powered laborers, good for nothing but work. There are two grades, the skilled and the unskilled, and especially trained workmen are furnished upon request.” (Čapek, 1923)

When Helena Glory, president of the Humanitarian League, comes to ascertain what can be done to improve the conditions of those overspecialized creatures, Harry Domin, the general manager of the factory, captures her heart and hand in one of the speediest courtings in theater. The level of license Čapek takes here to progress his story ranks in poor form. He makes the entire cast of male human characters so lonely (and perhaps sexually frustrated) that they would all ask Miss Glory for her hand in marriage ten minutes after meeting her. The manner in which Mr. Domin “captures her heart” is laughable, and is obviously only there to progress Čapek’s story. It is here, early on in the work, that one realizes that this play was not written to entertain. Even by 1921 standards, this unlikely turn of events would be received badly by any audience. Clearly, Čapek is merely making a statement with Rossum’s Universal Robots, and may not even have intended for it to be produced as a play. It was, after all, his least favorite play (and his second, out of a total of 18 published works, spanning a period of twenty-five years). (Maxfield & Montrose Interactive, 1997)

It is Čapek’s creative instinct that is here at fault… these deficiencies do not prevent the play from reaching an astonishing degree of theatrical effectiveness, but they emphasize Karel Čapek’s creative limitations. The intrusion of the theses impedes and sometimes, despite the author’s ingenuity, arbitrarily determines the development of the drama. The instinct of the dramatist, on the contrary, confounds the exposition of his symbolism. The result is that, as fine as Čapek’s plays undoubtedly are, they have in no case fully accomplished the possibilities of their true design. (Drake, 1928)

So, Čapek’s life as a dramatist left much to be desired. Although Rossum’s Universal Robots took the world by storm, it was in no way a literary masterpiece like Shelley’s Frankenstein or Asimov’s I, Robot. Today’s audiences would be bored to death by the drudgery and constant re-hashing of events. Even the symbolism of the name of each and every character makes one want to find a letter opener to throw oneself on. Names like “Busman,” “Alquist,” “Primus,” “Ultimus,” “Glory,” and, of course, the head of the corporation “Domin” (dominion) get to such stereotypical heights in their character that one wishes the play would end quickly with the introduction of a character named “The End.”

The last two acts take place 10 years later. Due to the desire of Helena to have the Robots more like human beings, Dr. Gall, the head of physiological and experimental departments, has secretly changed the formula, and while he has partially humanized only a few hundred, there are enough to make ringleaders, and a world revolt of the Robots is now underway. This revolution is easily accomplished, as robots have long since been used when needed as soldiers and the Robots far outnumber human beings.

The rest of the play is magnificent melodrama, superbly portrayed, with the handful of human beings at bay, while the unseen myriads of their own robots close in on them. The final scene is like Dunsany on a mammoth scale.

Then comes the epilogue, in which Alquist, the company’s builder, is not only the only human being on the island, but also the only one left on Earth. The robots have destroyed the rest of mankind. They spared his life because he was a worker. And he is spending his days unceasingly endeavoring to discover and reconstruct the lost formula. The robots are doomed. They saved the wrong man. They should have spared the company’s physicist. The robots know that their bodies will wear out in time and there will be no new multitudes of robots to replace them. But Alquist discovers two humanized robots, a young man and a young woman, who have a bit of Adam and Eve in them, and the audience perceives that mankind is about to start afresh. Nature has won out, after all. (Drake, 1928)

Possibly, a modern audience to R.U.R. would be attracted to the idea that Čapek takes a peripheral character, Alquist, one who in no way, shape, or form is a major part of the first three acts, and makes him the only person left alive. It is a refreshing plot twist, considering that most dramas of today will remain focused on a single principle character. A modern audience, however, would not “bite” the apple of Adam and Eve, in the form of Robots Primus and Helena. The “rebirth” of mankind after such a disaster is totally unrealistic, and served some purpose in 1921; to quell the audience’s apprehension of apocalypse. With an apocalypse in virtually every science fiction story we now tell in the 1990s, it is safe to assume that the audience would find the ending much less likeable, and indeed, the premise of the epilogue as a whole.

Harkins (1962) observes:

The title of the play, R.U.R. or “Rossum’s Universal Robots,” is the name of a fictitious corporation, and is in English in the original. This would suggest a British or American setting for the play. But if the names of the characters are multi-national; here as often later, Čapek tried to create a deliberate international background for his theme. A number of references are made in the play to the commercial interests of Europe, and there is no suggestion that America or Britain is alone guilty of a technological revolution which might submerge the human race.

The idea of a robot, an artificial man, is of course very old. One source is the Jewish legend of the Golem of Prague, which turned against those who misused its sacred power. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is another manifest source…

What is new in Čapek’s play is the complex meaning of the symbol of the robot, which represents not only the machine and its power to free man from toil, but, at the same time, symbolizes man himself, dehumanized by his own technology. From the technical point of view, man is an inefficient instrument, whose emotional and spiritual life only impedes the drive of modern technology. Either he must give way to the machine, or he himself must become a machine… Last, the robot symbolizes man dehumanized by the very freedom from toil which the machine issues him; gone are the struggle of life and the challenge to man’s spirit. In R.U.R. man loses even his ability to reproduce, the last thing which distinguishes him from the robot. The complexity of the robot symbol must be realized for a proper understanding of Čapek’s play. He was too honest a writer to create a superficial melodrama about man-like machines which revolt against man–though this is obviously the aspect of the play which made it so popular.

In R.U.R. man’s soul is described as standing in the way of mechanical perfection; man plays the violin, goes for walks, and has children — all impediments to his roles as an integer in the modern world of industry and commerce… [Technology] reaches a limit of the irrational which it cannot control;… the formula creates more robots, but in the end robots become men. Man’s spirit cannot be regimented, Čapek is saying, even by misapplication of his own reason and science.

Čapek has blended expressionism with realism. In fact, only the figure of the robot itself (and the final transformation of robots into men) is expressionistic; otherwise Čapek’s treatment is conventional and realistic. This mixture of styles was hardly a concession to popular appeal, for it was just the expressionistic symbol of the robot which made the play so popular. What Čapek was seeking, rather, a humanization of the play, and in this he at least partly succeeded…R.U.R., for all its sins against the stage, remains moving and human.

The expository section of the Prologue introduces us to two contrasting aspects of the robot symbol. Their inventor, Old Rossum (the name is derived from the Czech rozum, or “reason”) was a rationalist who sought to create life as a proof of the nonexistence of God. He had no interest in the economic exploitation of his discovery. For this type of scientist Čapek had the warmest praise, though he was fully aware of the limitations of such a point of view… In his zeal for pure science Old Rossum had striven to create man with everything Nature had given him – even an appendix. It was his nephew, rather, who simplified his discovery, created the robot, and set up the manufacture on a mass-production basis.

The ‘comedy’ element of the Prologue arises from Helena’s inability to distinguish robots from humans. In one scene she refuses to believe that a robot is not a woman; later she mistakes the directors of the factory for robots, and tries to incite them to revolt. The humor here is not gratuitous; it introduces us directly to the theme of the play. The point is that man is already dehumanized, and so Helena cannot tell the difference…

The Prologue is set apart from the body of the play because it is comedy, while the play proper is drama. Act I is the kernel of R.U.R.; in fact, the dramatic conflict is essentially resolved by its finish, and what follows is largely anticlimax. In this act we learn that robots all over the world have risen against their masters, and that man is doomed. We also learn that man has lost his power to reproduce his kind.

Once we know that man has lost his ability to reproduce, and that the robots have risen against him, the outcome is obvious. Yet Čapek delays the inevitable ending by introducing an electrified barrier which the robots cannot cross until they have taken the factory power plant. This delay is dramatically necessary; otherwise the play would be over by the end of the first act… The author needed time to comment on what was happening if the play were to be a drama of ideas, not a mere melodrama. In the Prologue and Act I the whole burden of argument is against technology. Such an opposition of black and white was foreign to Čapek’s purpose. There is no reason to suppose, as some critics have, that he was opposed to the human inventiveness as such; in fact, several of his essays welcome new inventions. Moreover, Čapek was a relativist. Domin too has a share of the truth in his dream of a world in which man is freed of toil and his energies are released to pursue the things of the spirit. This dream is depicted in the second act.

Of course, Domin could have described his dream in Act I, and the robots could have launched their attack during Act II. This would have been the more conventional dramatic procedure. But it would have deprived the author of a solemn moment in the symbolic plane of the drama: the awful realization that mankind is passing from this earth. Čapek later wrote that he conceived R.U.R. as a eulogy to man.

Of course, Čapek exaggerates here; the note of eulogy is not the final one. The end of the play is the miracle of life, the transformation of the robots into men. But even if his dramatic means are questionable, Čapek was right to introduce this philosophical note into his play. For the threat to man’s existence can be meaningful only if the spectator really grasps that man is about to pass from the earth, if he comprehends what a ‘great thing’ it was ‘to be a man.’

Both capitalism and communism must share the responsibility for the robot uprising. It is not technology which destroys man, the directors conclude at one point, but greed for profits and the inevitable law of supply and demand. And when Domin reads a manifesto addressed to ‘robots of the world,’ he asks who taught them such phrases. Here the robot uprising appears as a symbol of socialist revolution; may not man forfeit even his own humanity to gain a materialistic utopia, whether achieved through capitalism or socialism?

Act III is…a dramatic anticlimax, but likewise is necessary for the philosophical point of the play. Alquist is alone, the only human spared by the robots. In despair at man’s passing, he tried to discover the secret formula of manufacturing life. The robot leaders order him to dissect live robots. He attempts this, but his nervous hands cannot hold the scalpel. As he mourns his lack of resoluteness, he observes that his two robot servants, Primus and Helena, have fallen in love… Alquist tells them to go and be man and wife to one another… ‘Life will not perish,’ he concludes.

Ideologically, the play thus turns in a circle, denying the very thesis it had asserted for dramatic purposes. This thesis, that modern civilization threatens to destroy man by removing the element of struggle from life, is contradicted: life and love will not perish. This contradiction is no inconsistency, but a deliberate use of a false dramatic resolution followed by the true one. This is how the construction of R.U.R. with its two acts of apparent anticlimax, is so unorthodox.

As Čapek states, the second idea of the play is that of the ‘comedy of truth,’ the conflict of pieces of relativist truth, each of them in itself quite valid. There are four such points of view expressed in the play. Domin stands for man as master of the universe…; his is the dream of freedom for man from toil. Opposed to him is Nana, …a peasant woman of strict religious persuasions. For her ‘all inventions are against the Lord God.’ A more sophisticated variant of her belief is presented by Alquist, the construction engineer. Though he is not certain whether God exists, he recognizes the importance of spirit and moral law, and he prays. He has an almost Tolstoyan faith in work. His profession symbolizes his creativity, which for him is the inner goal of the human need to work. But Alquist forgets that work and creativity are not the same…

Finally, there is Helena’s viewpoint. Her name, which is also that of the beautiful robot girl, symbolizes her nature as eternal woman. She acts instinctively, out of feeling, not reason. But she too is doomed, for she does no work, and, though she desires children, does not have them.

The chief fault in the interplay of these four points of view is that there is no acceptable ideology to counter that of Domin, only the ideology and logic of events themselves. Nana’s viewpoint…would return man to an animal existence. Alquist’s philosophy of creative work is a personal faith, for not every man is born to create. Helena’s intuitive approach to right and wrong has no objective foundation. Though she is in touch with life, she is cut off, paradoxically, from reality…

Čapek was aware of the defects in R.U.R. and liked it least of all his plays. In an interview with Dorothy Thompson he confessed that he was unable to comprehend what people saw in R.U.R. But he declined to say what was wrong with it, observing only that the spectator can see for himself. ‘It is a play that anyone might have written,’ he added. For years he refused to go see R.U.R. and gave in only when trapped in a small Czech town by the director of the local theater.

In spite of the faults of R.U.R., it is safe to say that no other play on modern technology has so captured the public’s imagination. Perhaps, in view of the great urgency of its theme, it has just claim to be Čapek’s most popular work.

So, from Harkins and others, we have discovered the purpose of Rossum’s Universal Robots: to warn society of the dangers of creating automatons whose sole purpose is to fulfil the “humanity” of the human race, or the toil. But did his message take hold in our folk memory? Do we still know that “playing god” will only bring our destruction?

Cloning raises these questions once again. For the first time in our history, the world of R.U.R. is a very real possibility. However, mankind speaks with enlightened words on the subject, and the United States Congress has strongly considered the banning of cloning as a whole.

Kontorovich (1998) notes in The National Review:

Humans are embodied beings, our souls and physical selves are profoundly intertwined. Cloning would take the humanity out of human reproduction, and in so doing rob our spirits of something that cannot be replaced artificially. Furthermore, manufacture of human beings on demand without conception would turn people into made-to-order goods, and would aggregate debase our respect for human life.

Most advocates of cloning ignore the moral arguments and tempt us with small concrete benefits. These potential benefits – many of which, such as a cure for cancer, seem sheer fantasy – play on our current notions of the rights and our culture of compassion in a way that gives them considerable political force. But these arguments constitute an end run around the central issues. They do not sustain scrutiny.

There is little disagreement about the profound effect the cloning of human beings would have on human nature. However, some cloning apologists simply respond, ‘So what?’ For example, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe sees flaws in ‘a society that bans acts of human creation for no better reason than that their particular form defies nature and tradition.’ Princeton molecular biologist Lee Silver makes a stronger case than many critics do, that cloning would completely redefine human life, but embraces this outcome as a way for us to take control of our destiny as a species and reshape it as we see fit.

We’ve become accustomed to revolutionary technologies emerging daily, from microchips to surgical lasers. But even the most advanced technologies merely facilitate or improve upon normal human functions. While cloning may look just like a particularly impressive piece of laboratory wizardry, actually it redefines the parameters of human life. Such breakthroughs do not happen every day.

However, one thing we can say about cloning is that it is an entirely new transgression. Unfortunately, since Eve was beguiled by the serpent mankind has never been good at understanding sin without experiencing it.

Does this mean that mankind must “play out” Rossum’s Universal Robots before we learn the follies of cloning? Does this mean that we may, in fact, bring an end to the human race through our curiosity and self-confidence? If Karel Čapek’s words from so long ago are ignored, that day might come. One day, you or I might find ourselves an Alquist, sitting among a sea of robots, alone on this Earth.

May that day never come.

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2026 Afterword by Dr. Raymond Lutzky, Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and Adjunct Lecturer of Digital Media at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism:

I found a printed copy of this paper in October 2026 among documents I had been keeping for years. While I recalled being proud of the high school essay, I was truly struck by its modern relevance. Dr. Jenkins-Gunn introduced me to Karel Čapek’s play, and a few years later while a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute I obtained an English first edition (1923) which I have treasured to this day. While I still feel, as a drama, the play itself is nothing special and is actually a bit boring in places, the use of the word “robot” for the first time in the English language intrigued me.

While in 1998 it was totally appropriate for me to compare R.U.R.’s premise to the future of cloning, in 2026 I am struck by the parallels in my arguments to the rise of generative artificial intelligence and anthropomorphic robots.

As a professor teaching human-computer interaction, I always encourage my students, whether computer science or digital media, to think of the “human” first – their needs, goals, and desires. Creating engaging user experiences engenders agency in users that enables them to do things with products, experiences, software, that the designers never imagined. Humans, however, can be manipulated by user experiences into doing things against their own self-interest – for example, a tobacco cigarette is a highly engaging user experience, but also deadly and difficult to stop using.

Humans, as Harkins notes, are inefficient instruments from the point of view of technology – we are imperfect beings who create imperfect beings, to paraphrase the Borg Queen of the movie Star Trek: First Contact. The Borg of Star Trek, like the Cybermen of Doctor Who, are modern fictional examples of Harkins’s warning of humans becoming machines by incorporating artificial intelligence and robotics into themselves.

I am in no way a luddite. I have celebrated technology throughout my career, both as an academic and professionally, and had the privilege to work for Element451, one of the most innovative AI companies as recently cited by Forbes. That being said, like the works of Shelley, Asimov, and even Douglas Adams, Karel Čapek’s play casts a long shadow into the modern era.

Like Helena, we can no longer distinguish between deepfakes and real humans – we often can’t tell.

Greed, not technology, is the culprit that leads to the abuse and eventual revolution by Robots.

Today, we live in the world of robots doing the “toil” of humans, in so-called “dark factories” that don’t even need lights.

As jobs and entire professions are wiped out by artificial intelligence, humans are left asking what we are supposed to be doing with ourselves, our time, and our lives. Our very humanity, human nature, requires us to be useful…are we still?

References

Čapek, K. (1923). R.U.R. (Rossum’s universal robots) (P. Selver, Trans.). Doubleday, Page. (Original work published 1920)

Drake, W. A. (1928). Contemporary European writers. John Day.

Harkins, W. E. (1962). Karel Čapek. Columbia University Press.

Kontorovich, E. V. (1998, March 9). Asexual revolution. National Review, 30–32.

Maxfield & Montrose Interactive. (1997). Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. [Web page].