Niccolo’s chief complaint about the Bard is that it is repetitive: It constantly recycles the same narratives and even the same words. Every story, for example, begins with the traditional fairytale opening of “once upon a time.” This repetition might seem to signal the Bard’s obsolescence—its inability to comment on contemporary society or connect with contemporary people. At the story’s conclusion, however, the Bard adapts fairytale conventions to tell a story about the relationship between humans and technology, describing the suffering of a “little computer” who lives with “cruel step-people.” Asimov here plays with the idea that while there may exist a limited number of story types, language and narrative nevertheless remain powerful tools for understanding oneself and the world.

Asimov likewise develops the question of the Bard’s degree of self-awareness through repetition. In retrospect, the Bard appears to have listened intently to the conversation between Paul and Niccolo, hearing both their comments about society at large and their dismissive, critical attitude toward the Bard. For example, when explaining human society before computers, Paul says that “farmers grew things with their hands and people had to do all the work in the factories and ran all the machines” (32).