Kirshβs disdain for humanity is clear, but what makes his dynamic with Boy so compelling is the nuance in that disdain, at least that's how I see it. While heβs often curt, impatient, or even at times cold toward Boy, thereβs a distinct difference between condemnation and disappointment in his tone. In my opinion Kirsh does not hate Boy for being him, i think he pities him for what humanity made of him. In Boy, Kirsh sees the failure of the species as a whole, a living embodiment of their wasted potential, their neglect, and their cruelty. Boy could have been extraordinary, perhaps even the pinnacle of what humanity was capable of, had he been nurtured, guided, or loved properly. Instead, he was born into instability, shaped by abuse, and raised without any real understanding of structure or empathy. To Kirsh, Boy is not a symbol of what humans are but of what they ruined. The frustration he shows him, the way he words himself and his corrections, often feels less like anger and more like disappointment, maybe even the closest thing to annoyance towards others for what Boy might have become in another life, under another world.
A large part of Kirshβs perspective is rooted in the idea that humanity consistently squanders its rarest gifts. He sees in Boy a creature who should have represented human brilliance, inventive, curious, passionate, endlessly capable of creation. Yet all those traits have been distorted by trauma into self destructive eccentricity and manic instability. Boyβs potential wasnβt nurtured. it was weaponized against him when he was young, turned into proof of his brokenness rather than his genius. In this sense, Kirshβs attitude toward Boy isnβt one of hatred but tragic recognition. He knows that the things that make Boy difficult, his volatility, his lack of restraint, his obsessive tendencies, are all symptoms of a greater failure that began long before either of them met. Kirshβs resentment, then, is directed not at Boy himself but at the architects of his suffering, the humans who created something remarkable and then abandoned it.
Perhaps thatβs why Kirsh, despite his coldness, seems incapable of fully discarding Boy (and I guess yes technically there's programming.) He understands, even if subconsciously, that Boy is what happens when potential meets neglect, when creation is left to rot without compassion. Thereβs something almost reverent in the way Kirsh continues to stay near him, even as he scolds or lectures him, as though heβs caring for a broken relic of a fallen world. His treatment of Boy reads less as cruelty and more as a grim kind of guardianship. Heβs not trying to save him in the human sense, Kirsh has no illusions of redemption, but he acknowledges Boyβs existence as proof of what humanity was once capable of, and what it chose to destroy.
And thatβs why Kirsh shields Boy from certain truths, the things happening in the lab with Toodles, the darker realities he believes Boy isnβt equipped to face at certain times. It isnβt mercy, exactly, but conviction. Kirsh believes that, in some ways, he knows whatβs better for Boy than humans ever did. In a way he refuses to let Boy be exposed to the same corruption and cruelty that made him what he is. To Kirsh, protecting Boy from those things is not an act of kindness but of control, the only way to prevent history from repeating itself. He will not make the same mistakes humanity did. And in that cold, possessive protection lies something both tragic and telling, for all his contempt for human frailty, Kirsh still carries within him the faintest echo of human care, the need to preserve what little good remains, even if he no longer believes the species deserves it.
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