The concept of a man-machine mixture had become widespread in science fiction long before World War II.  As early as 1843, Edgar Allan Poe described an injured man with extensive prostheses in the satirical short story "The Man That Was Used Up".  The story follows an unnamed narrator who seeks out the famous war hero John A.B.C. Smith. When he visits the General's home, he sees nothing but a strange bundle of items on the floor. It is discovered that the bundle is the General himself.  His servant begins to "assemble" him, piece by piece. Limbs are screwed on, a wig, glass eye and false teeth, and a tongue, until the man himself stands "whole".

 

Modern critics question the vulnerability of human body and hint the story with “the ineluctable failure of the flesh.”  At the time of drastic transformations, science and medicine make the body “a chartable map, and this reification amplifies man’s sense of loss, turning death into the ultimate terror, loathsome and beguiling, a dialectics evident in Poe’s texts” (Almeida, 2010).  In the story, Poe criticizes the materialistic ideology associated with the emergence of capitalism as the body is conceived as “organic machine”.  Besides, some scholars suggest that Poe questions the strong male identity as well as how humanity falls as machines become more advanced.

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Works cited:

“The Man That Was Used Up.”  Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Sep 2018,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_That_Was_Used_Up.

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“The Dismembered Body: Poe's 'The Man That Was Used Up’ and Cindy Sherman's Prosthetic Compositions” The Edgar Allan Poe Review. Spring 2010. Volume XI, Number 1. Web.

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Images:

Wikimedia Foundation. "The Man That Was Used Up.”  ibid. 

 

DanielDuncan. “The Man That Was Used Up.” Found, Twitter, 29 Oct 2018, twitter.com/danielduncan/status/1056916650702917632.