Dave Character Analysis

The central robot in “Catch That Rabbit.” Dave is a multiple DV-5 robot with six subsidiaries, called “fingers,” that help him in the mines. Donovan and Powell are tasked with testing Dave, and they start to observe some odd behaviors in the mines. When Dave is not watched, he and the other robots sometimes stop producing ore, which concerns Donovan and Powell. Once, using video technology, they see that when an emergency strikes, Dave and his robots stop working and instead they start marching, or dancing. Donovan and Powell try to create circumstances that will allow them to observe Dave under these conditions, but this leads them to trap themselves in a cave-in, and only Dave can rescue them. Ultimately, they discover that Dave’s intentions were not sinister: having six subsidiary robots to control was simply too much for him to handle, and he became overwhelmed and started “twiddling his fingers”—another use of language that shows how the humans can only understand the robots based on human terminology and behaviors.