The Wild Robot

The focus of these chapters is on Roz and Brightbill’s relationship as mother and son. They spend their first night in their new home and Brightbill refuses to sleep in the moss that Roz prepares for him, as well as in his nest. He says, “Mama! Sit down!” When Roz responds, the gosling snuggles up in her arms and goes to sleep: “The robot’s body may have been hard and mechanical, but it was also strong and safe. The gosling felt loved” (90). This demonstrates that though they may appear a strange pair, a genuine bond has formed between them.

Roz is dedicated to being a good mother to Brightbill, so she welcomes the advice of other animal mothers. She also tries at every opportunity to learn more about how to parent the baby goose: “With a computer brain packed full of parenting advice, and the lessons she was learning on her own, the robot was actually becoming an excellent mother” (99). This is a testament to Roz’s analytical abilities, that she can learn and adapt successfully to perform a function that her programmers had never anticipated, that of the mother to a gosling.

Like all mothers, Roz finds that there are negative “feelings” that arise during parenting, including worry over her son’s safety. Roz responds strongly when the goslings are attacked by Rockmouth and Brightbill is left alone on the water, desperately trying to swim back to her: “Part of her knew she had to help her son, but another part knew she had to stay out of deep water” (104). Conflicted, Roz may have chosen to endanger herself if Loudwing had not swooped down to help Brightbill.

As before, the author/narrator uses the phrase “something like” to describe Roz’s emotion analogs: “Roz spent the morning watching her son swim around and around the pond. And as she watched him, she felt something like gratitude” (103). This is true for Roz’s more negative parenting experiences, as noted above: “Roz felt something like fright the time she saw Brightbill swallowing pebbles on the beach” (106). Though robots cannot have feelings, Roz is experiencing “something like” the joys and worries of being a mother. This continues when Brightbill, who is different from the other goslings because he has a robot mother, makes his first friend: “The protective mother was never far away, and she felt something like amusement at the silly conversations she overheard, and she felt something like happiness that her son had made such a good friend” (111). Roz clearly knows what it is like to be different from those around her, so it is gratifying to her that her son is not wanting for friendship.

Roz herself makes friends, as the animals come to not only accept, but like her. Mr. Beaver had correctly predicted that having a garden would draw friends to Roz. Just during the first day, when Tawny asked the animals to come and deposit their droppings, Roz’s neighbors find that once they get to know Roz, she is far from frightening: “And just like that, the robot was meeting her neighbors. The plan to help her make friends was already starting to work” (93). Roz has become part of her community.

Another theme of the chapters involved the concept of “design” or purpose, what an individual is meant to do in life. Though she is technically not alive, Roz is programmed to have purpose. She is activated in a way not anticipated by her programmers, so she is not assigned duties. She must find her own duties. The narrator emphasizes this with a recurrent phrase. For example, when Roz makes her garden thrive, the reader is told, “Clearly, Roz was designed to work with plants” (96). This is compared to Brightbill’s instinctive behavior: “Clearly, Brightbill was designed to swim” (101), and later: “Clearly, Brightbill was designed to fly” (115). The narrator again draws a direct comparison between Roz’s programming and the animals’ instincts.

Roz’s unique abilities as a robot with a computer brain help improve upon Brightbill’s instincts as a bird. She analyzes the flying behaviors of other birds she has observed to give Brightbill advice on learning to soar and fly: “Sometimes they flap their wings quickly, and other times they fly without flapping at all. They spread their wings and soar on the wind” (113). Roz makes recommendations for how Brightbill can change the angle of his wings and move his tail feathers until he is successfully flying. Roz shows that having a robot mother can have distinct advantages.

This section of chapters concludes with Roz and Brightbill’s observation of a ship out in the ocean. This occurrence foreshadows changes that will come to the island later in the story.