Robopocalypse Theme

The book "Robopocalypse", by Daniel H. Wilson, is very very gory and full of strong language. yet underneath the layers of action, I found that there is a true theme. There are no main characters in the book so far, it's mainly just a flashback of the robot war told in different stories. While reading the different stories, I discovered what I thought to be the theme of the book. The theme I found was that putting your life in the hands of a first impression is dangerous.

These new technologies, robots as we call them, were programmed carefully and specifically to not harm anyone, unless for self defense. The creators put very little testing into these robots, and practically sent them out into the world the second the stared working. As I put it, these people put their lives in the hand of a first impression. A great example of this was when a robot killed many civilians. The SAP One, a robot literally programmed to not hurt civilians, no matter what they do. SAP One is practically indestructible on top of that. However, one gruesome day, he goes completely haywire and kills many, many civilians before killing itself. "It murdered those people in cold blood" -Specialist Paul Blanton, page 63.

As you can see, putting your life at risk on a first impression will almost never end up brightly. There were many other examples of this theme, but I found that this was the best example of it. This book is teaching me a very good lesson, even through the violence and bad words, which relates to what we're learning in class on banned books. This theme has taught me to never truly trust a first impression, no matter how good or bad it is, there may always be a flip side. Next time you're having a first impression on something, put some thought into whether you should trust it or not. You won't regret it.