• ISSN: 2382-6282 (Print); 2972-3108 (Online)
    • Abbreviated Title: Int. J. Lang. Lit. Linguist.
    • Frequency: Bimonthly
    • DOI: 10.18178/IJLLL
    • Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Jason Miin-Hwa Lim
    • Managing Editor:  Jennifer X. Zeng
    • Indexed by:   CNKI, Google Scholar, Crossref,
    • E-mail: ijlll_Editor@126.com
IJLLL 2020 Vol.6(4): 177-182 ISSN: 2382-6282
DOI: 10.18178/IJLLL.2020.6.4.272

What If Robots Surpass Man Morally? Dehumanising Humans, Humanising Robots in Ian McEwan‟s Machines Like Me

Tarik Ziyad Gulcu

Abstract—Ian McEwan’s fictional works and the interviews with him contribute to the appreciation of his worldview. As a sign of his human-centred approach to life, McEwan puts emphasis on the maintenance of the individual self despite the institutional restrictions in Sweet Tooth (2012), while he deals with the discovery of individuality in spite of a dogmatic attachment to religious beliefs in The Children Act (2014). McEwan’s Nutshell (2016) epitomises the questioning mind and human progress as a result of freedom from dogmatic beliefs and strict institutional norms. However, McEwan focuses on a paradox in Machines Like Me (2019). In the novel, the robot protagonist, Adam’s emphasis on honesty and making donation in contrast to Charlie and Miranda’s concerns for material interests arguably signify the dehumanisation of humans and the humanisation of robots. Thus, Machines Like Me invites reading for its representation of this paradox, embodying McEwan’s criticism of human frailties.

Index Terms—Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me, robots, humans.

Tarik Ziyad Gulcu is with the School of Foreign Languages at Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey (e-mail: tarikzgulcu@yahoo.com).

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Cite:Tarik Ziyad Gulcu, "What If Robots Surpass Man Morally? Dehumanising Humans, Humanising Robots in Ian McEwan‟s Machines Like Me," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 177-182, 2020.

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