Scribd
Upload
69 views

Written By: Bianca Catherina A. Quijada: REFLECTION PAPER: Bicentennial Man

Andrew is a robot who is brought home by the Martin family as their butler. Over 200 years, Andrew gains increasingly human-like qualities through his interactions with the family and his own desires. He develops emotions, insists on dressing and living as a human, and falls in love with a human woman. Andrew pleads to the World Congress to be recognized as a human being, but they refuse due to his immortality. To prove his humanity, Andrew undergoes an operation to make his systems decay like a human. On his 200th birthday, the World President signs a law declaring Andrew an official man.

Uploaded by

Bianca Bianca
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
69 views

Written By: Bianca Catherina A. Quijada: REFLECTION PAPER: Bicentennial Man

Andrew is a robot who is brought home by the Martin family as their butler. Over 200 years, Andrew gains increasingly human-like qualities through his interactions with the family and his own desires. He develops emotions, insists on dressing and living as a human, and falls in love with a human woman. Andrew pleads to the World Congress to be recognized as a human being, but they refuse due to his immortality. To prove his humanity, Andrew undergoes an operation to make his systems decay like a human. On his 200th birthday, the World President signs a law declaring Andrew an official man.

Uploaded by

Bianca Bianca
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

REFLECTION PAPER: Bicentennial Man

Written by: Bianca Catherina A. Quijada

Every year passing by, technology is as well rapidly advancing to the point that it
even surpasses human capabilities. Human robot is one of the greatest technologies
that have ever been developed in the world. It performs a lot of human task thanks to its
artificial intelligent that are programmed to do things base on what it detects from its
surroundings. Some advanced robots can even do tasks that are impossible for a
human being to perform. Maybe someday, robots can also be humans.

Recently, I was given a task by my teacher to watch the movie, “Bicentennial


Man”. Bicentennial Man is 1999 film directed by Chris Columbus. The story is about a
robot named Andrew, who slowly became a man for 200 years. It all started when the
Martin family brought the robot home as their family butler. Little miss was the one who
named him Andrew. When Andrew broke the little miss’s favorite figurine, he replaced it
with carved wood which was made personally by him. Soon, the Martin Family realizes
that they don’t just have an ordinary robot. Andrews was special and he somewhat
posses human intellect, as a matter of fact he even displayed emotions. This made the
Martins treat him as one of their family member and even supports him in everything he
does. When the time comes, Andrew wanted to have freedom. At first Sir refuses his
request but soon he gave Andrew the freedom he wanted. Andrew begins to wear
clothes and insisted on dressing like a human, even though most humans refuse to
accept him. He even met Portia and soon fell in love with her. That did not satisfy
Andrew yet and he started replacing his parts with artificial organs just like a real human
would have. Andrew pleaded to the World Congress to declare him as a whole human
being but unfortunately it was not approved by the chairman of congress. Since they
cannot consider Andrew as a human for he is a mere machine and immortal unlike
humans that eventually dies. So with this, Andrew underwent to a fatal operation,
altering his positronic brain so that it will decay with time. He has the operation arranged
so that he will live to be 200. When he goes before the World Legislature, he reveals his
sacrifice, moving them to declare him a man. The World President signs the law on
Andrew's two-hundredth birthday, declaring him a bicentennial man.

Base on my interpretations from the film, being a human does not only mean
having the body of a human. As long as we have the freewill to do the things and think,
we can be someone who we believed to be. Just like Andrew, he may not be a human
but in his mind he knows what he wants and what he does. He even wanted to have his
own will just like any other human and always thought of himself as one of them despite
people refusing to recognize him as such. This even made him undergo a lot of
operations and modifications just so that the society will declare recognized him as a
whole human being. In short, it tells as that being a human is not just about having a
body of a human; it is something that we instill in ourselves.

You might also like