Structure
“Compassion Circuit” by John Wyndham is structured around a single event taking place in the lives of Janet and George: The arrival of a household robot, which has a compassion-circuit feature integrated into its system. The story follows a traditional plot line, having an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolut…
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Beginning
The main characters and the context of the short story are presented in the exposition:
By the time Janet had been five days in the hospital she had become converted to the idea of a domestic robot. It had taken her two days to discover that Nurse James was a robot, one day to get over the surprise, and two more to realize what a comfort an attendant robot could be. (ll. 1-4)
The beginning of the story reveals that the action takes place in a future…
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Middle
The rising action presents the consequences of Janet and her husband’s decision to buy a model from a new generation of robots equipped with a compassion-circuit, a feature that resembles human judgement:
‘It’s something pretty new, this Nurse James model. A specially developed high-sensibility job with a quite novel contra-balanced compassion-protection circuit (…) any direct order which a normal robot would obey at once is evaluated by the circuit, weighed against the benefit or harm to the patient, and unless it is beneficial, or at least harmless, it is not obeyed.’ (ll. 48-53)
To help her feel more comfortable with the robot, Janet also has specific demands (ll.70-74). After they receive the robot and prepare to switch it on, Janet cannot help but think of it as of a person. This is why she names the robot Hester.
As the action shifts to a few months after Hester’s acquisition, we find out that Janet and Heste…
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Ending
The short falling action presents George who, in shock, stumbles out of Janet’s room and falls down the stairs: “ ‘NO! NO!’ cried George, almost in a shriek. He turned and ran blindly from the room. In the darkness on the landing he missed the top step of the stairs, and went headlong down the whole flight.” (ll. 314-316)
In the resolution, Hester, who finds George, calls the ambulance. The ending suggests that George wi…
