“I’d imagine the whole world was a one big machine – machines never come with extra parts you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the world was a one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. “ – Hugo, from the movie Hugo(2011)

The significance of the automatons is not only of its humanlike appearance, and what that projects, but also of their specialized functions and abilities of imitating a single human behavior. (228, Feldman) For Hugo, his fascination with machines is that they have a definite purpose of existence. Being an orphan boy practically raising himself up, assurance that he is not useless but even he has a purpose in life is what he needs the most. Although they may be confined to a single task, the specificity of the purpose of machines can be seen as ideal in the way that it has a clear purpose of existence.

As it can be seen from the snapshot of a scene of the movie, Hugo is looking out from a clock tower of a train station in Paris, where the movie majorly takes place. The clock tower is also where he considers home. It is shown numerously in the movie of how Hugo maneuvers his way around the gigantic clock. It is as if Hugo is part of the machine as a whole, of which Hugo’s assigned duty is to maintain the clock to run exactly on time. The biggest reason why Hugo takes refuge in the clock tower is to hide from the train station inspector to avoid being sent to the orphanage. Here, the machine is used a defense mechanism protecting Hugo from the outside world. The detached nature of an automaton is another ideal that it embodies, an example of which is well illustrated in the essay Joey the Mechanical Boy by Noor Al-Mahruqi. The ability for an automaton to simple-mindedly focus on a single task is drastically contrasting to its human-looking appearance, and thus is what triggers the feeling of the uncanny.