A Not So Strange Playfellow In the short story Strange Playfellow, Isaac Asimov reflected on social anxieties of the late 1930s, a time when massive technological breakthroughs we're changing daily life. This anxiety was shown in the story by the mothers irrational hatred of robots. This hatred is created from technology fulfilling the maternal role in her daughters life. Asimov, dismisses these anxieties, displaying technological advances as inherently good. However, he acknowledges peoples discomfort in abandoning common societal roles and the traditions that accompany them. All technological advances were positively represented in the text. However, peoples inability to embrace this new technology and its effect on societal roles is the driving problem throughout the story.

Asimov correctly predicts intelligent robots, speedy air travel, interplanetary expositions, and the emergence of technology in day-to-day life. Its role in the story improves human life and for the most part, humans embrace this technology and it's widespread popular use. This positive representation of technology is shown primarily through the character Robbie. Robbie Is a sentient robot companion to the girl in the story …show more content…
This is shown at the beginning of the story when she calls her daughter to come home and the daughter responds “not quite happily”. Robbie refers to the mother as an “autocratic woman”, and her husband loves her for reasons unknown to him. She goes against her family’s needs to further her irrational beliefs instilled from recent public anxiety. She has an unwarranted hatred for Robbie and refers to him as “that terrible machine”. This disregard for her families pain is seen when her husband suggests that they get Robbie back due to their daughters daily anguish. The mom angrily replies that her “Child shall not be brought up by a robot even if it takes years to break her of