True Love

“‘It is just a matter of matching sounds to symbols, Joe,’ he told me. ‘That’s the way it works in the human brain even though we still don’t know what symbols there are in the brain. I know the symbols in yours, and I can match them to words, one-to-one.’”

When Milton tells Joe this, he is oversimplifying what language is, much like a parent or teacher would talk to a child. In this way, Milton is careful in the beginning to explain things clearly, telling Joe only what he needs to know. In the beginning of this story, Milton treats Joe like his child, withholding information and explaining only parts of it in simple terms.

“I’m tired of improving you in order to solve the problems of the world. Solve my problem. Find me true love.”

When thinking about only one’s own perspective, the problems of the world can tend to seem distant, even unimportant or uninteresting. This points to Milton’s selfishness and his desperation.

“Milton had arranged me to do things I wasn’t designed to do. No one knew about that.”

In this short story’s few pages, Joe transforms from Milton’s servant to his shadow and then to his betrayer. Even though the story is short, Asimov uses foreshadowing and subtle changes in Joe’s language to signal the dramatic changes in his character as he matures.