Tik-Tok Literary Elements

Science Fiction

Fictional time when free-thinking robots have careers, aspirations and goals and exist alongside humans in society

Narrator is the eponymous robot Tik-Tok and the story is told from his point of view

Threatening and amoral

Tik-Tok is both protagonist, in that he is the key character, and antagonist, in that his entire existence is amoral and goes against everything we know to be moral and necessary in a decent and law-abiding society

Conflict between the robotic protagonist and the victims he murders

The climax of his initial murder is the success he entertains as an artist after creating a mural to co we up the bloodstain evidence

The fact he is not apprehended foreshadows the inevitability of his murdering again and again

The observation that he is a perfect politician is an understatement because he has every trait that people believe politicians to have including an amoral sense of their own importance and the ability to tell the public to do right whilst simultaneously doing incredibly wrongly themselves

Throughout the novel the author alludes to other science fiction writers of note and states that Tik-Tok's "Asimov circuits" are damaged alluding to author Isaac Asimov

The imagery all relates to murder and cruelty, creating a picture of cruel and unusual death

The beauty of the robot's art and the ugliness of what it covers up is the central paradox in the novel

There is a parallel between the sinking of Tik-Tok in terms of his morality and his increased success the more amoral he becomes. The author has such a dim view of those who succeed in business and politics that he leads the reader to draw this parallel from his protagonist' actions

No specific examples in this novel

The robotic main character is personified and is written as a robotic human rather than as a robot who. Reds to be programmed and operated.