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Civism, the philosophy that supports the way of life created by the Cities, combines two elements: a basic level of security ("the mere fact of living in a modern city insured the bare possibility of existence, even for those entirely declassified") and a life enclosed, crowded, and conducted at levels of existence made bearable only by evolved attitudes of Earthmen, the folkways developed to cope with the problems, and certain small privileges that accompany increasing classification. Enderby, for instance, earns the right to a window in his office (this detail also emphasizes his Medievalism); Baley has earned the activation of his washbowl and the privilege of eating in his home. Although "it was considered the height of ill form to parade `status,' the loss of such small privileges would make life unbearable." Modern civism has minimized the competitive struggle for existence that had been the rule during the "fiscalism" of medieval times, but it has not completely eliminated the struggle for status. All is perceived and to good effect through the filter of Baley's consciousness. Asimov shows us his world or as much of it as his art tells him to show us not in the first person but in the third, through Baley. The reader is with Baley constantly through the novel: Baley's goals, to solve the mystery and to get rid of the threat of the Spacers, are the reader's goals; his perceptions are all the reader gets; and his thoughts (with such exceptions as are acceptable in third-person narration) are shared with the reader. It is Baley who perceives the Cities as good, and it is his changing attitude toward Daneel (and robots in general), the Spacers, and the Cities that the novel really is about.
The Caves of Steel is that rarity in science fiction, a novel of character. Character is not supposed to concern science-fiction authors very much. Asimov, as a writer who specializes more than most in ideas and rationality, might be expected to care even less. Lije Baley, however, is the key factor in the novel, not merely because he is the detective who must solve the mystery but because of what he is in addition to being a detective.
Unlike other Asimov characters, Baley has a past. His father had been a nuclear physicist with a rating in the top percentile, who was declassified because of an accident in the nuclear plant where he worked. Baley's mother died early, and his father died when Baley was eight. Baley remembers him as sodden, morose, lost, speaking sometimes of the past in hoarse, broken sentences. Baley and his two older sisters went into the Section orphanage. Baley knows the horror of declassification, and that knowledge motivates his desperation to solve the mystery rather than go through what his father suffered. Also

 
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