58 pages • 1 hour read
Isaac AsimovThe Caves of Steel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Conversation with a Commissioner”
The Caves of Steel opens with R. (Robot) Sammy interrupting Lije Baley’s work, telling Lije that the Commissioner needs to see him. The robot stares at Lije until Lije tells him to leave. Lije makes his way to the Commissioner’s office, stopping to chat with a coworker, Simpson. Simpson reiterates R. Sammy’s message from the Commissioner and tells Lije that he would kick the robot if he could, as the robot has taken a human’s job.
Lije stops to admire the glass etching on Commissioner Julius Enderby’s door. When Lije enters the office, he tells his boss that he doesn’t appreciate being summoned by R. Sammy. Enderby apologizes for not telling the robot to return after issuing the summons. Enderby stands by the window, which is a historical relic: Buildings don’t have windows anymore, but Enderby had this one specially installed. He looks out on the sprawling, stacked buildings of New York City as he cleans his glasses.
Enderby invites Lije to join him at the window, and its transparency makes Lije uncomfortable: “There was something indecent about the exposure of the privacy of the room to the outside world” (4). The men discuss the view, the rain, and Spacetown, the settlement created by humans visiting other planets. These people have fully integrated with their robots and live in sparsely populated outworlds.
The men sit down on either side of Enderby’s desk, and the Commissioner tells Lije about a murder case in Spacetown. A doctor, Roj Nemennuh Sarton, was shot and killed with a blaster. Lije argues that Enderby should get another agency to take the case, but Enderby tells Lije that he is the only man for the job. He tells Lije that it would mean a promotion, maybe even up to two classes. Hearing this, Lije reluctantly agrees. Enderby then tells Lije that he will have a Spacer—a resident of Spacetown—partner with him on the case, and that the partner will be a robot. For the duration of the case, the robot must stay in Lije’s apartment with his wife and child. Lije protests, but Enderby presses him until he agrees.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Round Trip on an Expressway”
Lije begins the journey to Spacetown on the Expressway. His mind wanders to Earth’s relationship with the Spacers upon their re-entry to Earth: They returned when Lije was a young man. There were many protests about their presence, technology, and physical isolation. The Spacers, who had eradicated disease, created a boundary and customs agency to check visitors for disease. Their isolationism and use of robots bred tension between the groups.
Many of the Earth’s population resent the robots for taking human jobs while the Spacers have integrated robots into their lives. Lije considers how most people on Earth are Medievalists to some extent, meaning that they yearn for a lost time, before the hive cities or the robots. The population of Earth continues to grow even as food supplies and available jobs decrease due to technological optimization. Earth’s people now live entirely in large cities to increase efficiency and limit resource loss. All citizens live in large complexes, eat in communal dining halls, and use shared showers. However, the higher your class, the more individual options, like food choices, private bathrooms, and eating in your home, are allowed.
The Spacers live in individual homes on the other side of the farm expanse outside the city. They have strict regulations separate from the towns about who can visit and when. The resentment between the city-dwellers and Spacers has resulted in some incidents recently, as more humans lose their jobs to robots. Lije considers this tension as he rides the expressway. He witnesses a woman drop her bag and ponders the difficulty she will have navigating the acceleration strips, moving walkways that increase in speed, to retrieve it. Lije arrives at Spacetown and is greeted by someone he assumes is a Spacer. As he greets the man, he introduces himself as Lije’s robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw.
The pair makes their way back to the city together. Lije races through the acceleration strips as he makes his way to the expressway. Daneel has no problem keeping pace with him. Upon leaving the expressway, they come to a shoe shop surrounded by an angry mob; they are shouting for the destruction of the new shoe-fitting robots. Lije recalls the riots when the barrier between Spacetown and the City was erected. He and Daneel push through the crowd to assess the situation in the shop.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Incident at a Shoe Counter”
Lije and Daneel find the store manager, customers, and robots barricaded behind the force doors of the shop. While keeping the crowd out, the doors also keep the customers inside. The manager explains that they recently received shoe-fitting robots. One of the customers refused to be fitted by the robot, causing the commotion.
The two police officers work to calm the woman. The woman shrieks that a human should fit her. Lije thinks back to his father, who lost his job to a robot, and about R. Sammy. The crowd continues to grow, calling for the robots to be destroyed. Daneel asks Lije what the procedure is in this situation. Lije explains that the robots were assigned, and the store was within its rights to insist they be used. Daneel says they should order the woman to be fitted and leave or just leave. Lije explains that the mob dramatically complicates the situation.
Daneel orders that the store manager open the doors. Daneel then pulls out his blaster and tells the crowd that he will shoot anyone who attempts to disrupt the store’s business. Daneel’s tactic succeeds, but Lije tells Daneel never to pull a blaster on a human again. Daneel argues that his actions were calculated: “my briefing on human characteristics here among the people of Earth includes the information that […] they are trained from birth to accept authority” (38). Lije emphasizes that they would be in grave danger if the crowd had realized that Daneel was a robot. Daneel replies that they are in no danger, as he looks human and is not recognizable as a robot. Lije begins to think that his job may also be in risk of being taken over by robots. The pair then continues on their journey to Lije’s home.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The initial chapters establish the novel’s premise, the setting of New York City, Lije Baley’s character, and the novel’s major themes. Isaac Asimov uses juxtaposition to develop the tension between Spacetown and the City, between the Spacers and the Medievalists, and between Lije’s loyalty and self-preservation. These juxtapositions highlights the book’s central theme of Tradition Versus Technology and create an adversarial atmosphere of two worlds that oppose one another but must learn to live together for their mutual survival.
Chapter 1 establishes the novel’s worldbuilding. When Lije and Commissioner Enderby stand at the window, Lije marvels at the City’s “many fingers, groping upwards […] the outer shells of human hives” (6). The City holds humans together in the titular caves of steel. These settlements hold the population together in the most efficient manner possible. The tall, crowded buildings contrast with Enderby’s description of Spacetown’s “low domes spread out […] each family has a dome for itself. One family: one house” (6). The Spacers’ limited population allows them to live a very different life than the citizens of the City. The contrast between the two descriptions emphasizes the tension between the Spacers and the city dwellers. The city dwellers must use communal resources; to do more would be a waste. Yet, on the other side of the barrier, Spacetown has single-family dwellings with yards. This is part of the resentment that the Earth dwellers hold toward the Spacers; they see them as flaunting Earth’s culture by insisting on living the same way they do on other worlds.
The first chapters explore Lije’s character. Earth dwellers are categorized as Medievalists or modernists, i.e., those who are nostalgic about Earth’s old ways versus those who believe in modernization, such as integrating robots into everyday life. The Commissioner refers to Lije as a modernist although Lije is uncomfortable working with robots. This is part of Lije’s central tension as a character: He does not sit firmly on one side of the argument or the other. As he rides the expressway, he thinks about how he participated in the Barrier Riots outside Spacetown when it was established 25 years ago, calling for the “Dirty Spacers” to leave. However, Lije knows the bitter side of life on Earth: Lije and his two older sisters grew up in an orphanage after their father, who was a nuclear physicist, was blamed for an accident at his power plant and declassified. Afterward, the family went from being ultra-privileged to living in communal barracks. Lije’s mother died soon after (Lije was around two years old), and his father died when Lije was eight. Their maternal Uncle Boris was too poor to adopt them. One of the main reasons Lije takes the case is to increase his rating and protect his family’s status because he understands the alternative.
These chapters also set up Asimov’s allegorical storytelling. On the expressway, Lije witnesses a woman drop her purse, and passersby unknowingly kick it from one strip to the next. This small incident encapsulates one of the book’s messages: Humans cannot hold on as time and technology race on. Actions have a domino effect, and their end results cannot always be predicted. Like the bag rolling across the acceleration strips, Lije is unable to stop the case from pulling him forward into unknown territory, no matter what the consequence will be for his career, his family, and himself.
The third chapter illustrates the tension between the Medievalists and the Spacers. The woman at the shoe store refuses to be served by the robot because she knows it took a human’s job. The Medievalist movement centers on a desire to return to pre-City life on Earth and The Human Desire to Pioneer. In this way, they are like the Spacers: They believe that Earth’s citizens could adapt to a city-less life. Whereas the Spacers avoided crowded city life by enhancing technology, limiting birth rates, and populating other planets, the Medievalists want to return to a life on Earth connected with nature. Lije does not subscribe to Medievalism but sympathizes with the desire to live more securely. Based on his own experience, he knows his class rating is the only thing keeping his family from subsistence living.
Finally, these chapters characterize Daneel, the coprotagonist who complicates Lije’s feelings about robots and exemplifies Asimov’s Three Laws. When Daneel threatens the crowd with a blaster, he has no intention of shooting, but his gesture threatens the delicate truce between the Spacers and the Earth dwellers. Spacetown prevailed after the riots because Earth’s military was no match for the Outer World fleet. Now that a Spacer has been murdered on Earth, tensions are even higher than normal. Daneel’s logical mind does not grasp these nuances; he thinks only about the most expedient way to end the confrontation, highlighting The Core Difference Between Robots and Humans.
These initial incidents foreshadow greater conflicts to come. The Steel Caves is a novel of contrasts, and the Spacer’s murder is just one instance of opposites colliding. The result of the case will have dire implications for the future of both Spacetown and Earth. The case will also make or break Lije’s career and bring the conflict between the Medievalists and Spacers to a head.
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