55 pages • 1 hour read
2001: A Space Odyssey
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Character Analysis
David Bowman
Bowman is the last surviving member of the Discovery’s crew on its mission to Saturn. He is the central protagonist in his section of the novel and the subject of the next phase of human evolution, becoming the Star Child. As he spends significant amounts of time alone, readers learn about his character through his actions and his interactions with Hal (who becomes his antagonist) and through the voice of the narrator, with whom his perspective frequently merges in free indirect discourse. The dialogue in this novel—which has secrecy and mystery at its heart—is sparse and often conceals unspoken truths or unasked questions. Bowman’s silence plays its part in this atmosphere of concealment and fraught or failed communication.
To an extent, Bowman’s character is allegorical; he plays the role of humanity on his voyage to the stars. This means that he is not much differentiated. He is unique enough to be recognizable as a human being, but not so much that his destiny becomes his alone. This impression is assisted by his similarities to his colleague Poole, with whom he shares an identical and strictly regimented routine, and to other deep space astronauts. Neither Poole nor Bowman, for example, have families or other commitments on Earth.
He studies in his free time, listens to music, reads poetry, and enjoys learning about the history of exploration—habits that embed Bowman in a long tradition of voyaging. For example, he “pursue[s] the Maila galleons with Anson, sail[s] with Cook along the unknown hazards of the Great Barrier Reef, achieve[s] with Magellan the first circumnavigation of the world” (93). This is close identification—he doesn’t merely read about these adventures but seems to participate in them—assimilating Bowman into a tradition and archetype. His name reinforces this idea: A “bowman” is the person on a boat who is in charge of the sail. Bowman’s character does not develop per se, but he does undergo a radical transformation when he becomes the Star Child, endowed with power and knowledge beyond ordinary human capabilities.Bowman is the last surviving member of the Discovery’s crew on its mission to Saturn. He is the central protagonist in his section of the novel and the subject of the next phase of human evolution, becoming the Star Child. As he spends significant amounts of time alone, readers learn about his character through his actions and his interactions with Hal (who becomes his antagonist) and through the voice of the narrator, with whom his perspective frequently merges in free indirect discourse. The dialogue in this novel—which has secrecy and mystery at its heart—is sparse and often conceals unspoken truths or unasked questions. Bowman’s silence plays its part in this atmosphere of concealment and fraught or failed communication.
To an extent, Bowman’s character is allegorical; he plays the role of humanity on his voyage to the stars. This means that he is not much differentiated. He is unique enough to be recognizable as a human being, but not so much that his destiny becomes his alone. This impression is assisted by his similarities to his colleague Poole, with whom he shares an identical and strictly regimented routine, and to other deep space astronauts. Neither Poole nor Bowman, for example, have families or other commitments on Earth.
He studies in his free time, listens to music, reads poetry, and enjoys learning about the history of exploration—habits that embed Bowman in a long tradition of voyaging. For example, he “pursue[s] the Maila galleons with Anson, sail[s] with Cook along the unknown hazards of the Great Barrier Reef, achieve[s] with Magellan the first circumnavigation of the world” (93). This is close identification—he doesn’t merely read about these adventures but seems to participate in them—assimilating Bowman into a tradition and archetype. His name reinforces this idea: A “bowman” is the person on a boat who is in charge of the sail. Bowman’s character does not develop per se, but he does undergo a radical transformation when he becomes the Star Child, endowed with power and knowledge beyond ordinary human capabilities.
Hal
Hal is the Discovery’s computer system and embodies The Threat and Promise of Artificial Intelligence. He is a HAL 9000, an advanced machine, but his crewmates and the narrator usually refer to him as “Hal,” as if he were a person. This is one of many anthropomorphic touches in the novel’s representation of artificial intelligence. In fact, he often seems less robotic than his human counterparts. They are predictably tied to their routines and speak very little; Hal, by contrast, is emotional and unpredictable. He is more likely to initiate conversation and pose questions than his silent crewmates.
Hal’s guilt at keeping a secret causes him to commit sabotage and then murder. As he develops more complex emotional responses, he comes into conflict with his crewmates and becomes the central antagonist of the novel. However, his situation is not without pathos, and in a novel that portrays violence as so central to human nature, his actions render him more human rather than less so. Indeed, as he becomes more dangerous, his speech becomes more naturalistic. For example, he begins clearing his throat before he makes announcements.
The development of Hal’s character drives the plot because it is his unsuspected complexity of emotional response that leads him to murder Discovery’s crew, which in turn strands Bowman alone in deep space. Hal’s development is analogous to the development of Moon-Watcher in the first segment of the novel; in each case, a peaceful and “primitive” creature survives and evolves through the development of envy and violence.
Frank Poole
Poole is Bowman’s crewmate, the only other member of the Discovery’s crew who is awake during the voyage to Saturn. Like Bowman, Poole is ignorant of their real mission, but Poole is less developed as a character. Poole remains peripheral, and his actions are usually reported as Bowman experiences them rather than from his own viewpoint. As such, readers gain no insight into his interior life beyond the fact that he is cautious: “Frank Poole would not have been on this mission unless he was careful and conscientious” (124). On his birthday, he receives a message from his family; his mother speaks “tearfully,” but his response is simply to think “[h]ow strange to think […] that all this had happened more than an hour ago” (113). When he is killed, he doesn’t feel afraid because he experiences “astonishment so great that it left no room for fear” (136). It is significant that the novel says more about what he doesn’t feel than what he does, suggesting a lack of emotional and psychological complexity. This makes him a foil to Hal, whom readers might expect to find unemotional but whose emotion shapes the plot. Poole’s death is a decisive moment in the plot, indicating that Hal is not merely making mistakes but actively causing harm.
Dr. Heywood Floyd
Floyd is the central protagonist of Part 2, and he returns via message later in the novel to give Bowman more information about his mission. Floyd is chairman of the National Council of Astronautics and has been sent to the Moon to manage the discovery of TMA-1. Compared to the astronauts later in the novel, Floyd is given a fuller, rounder depiction. Readers learn, for example, that he has children and that his wife had died in an airplane accident. He experiences loneliness and homesickness. These qualities contrast with the more mechanized human existence aboard Discovery. Floyd is also more social than Bowman and Poole; his work is to communicate, and he does so skillfully, if not entirely openly or honestly. For example, he engages in small talk, where no other central character does so. He also smiles and is smiled at more frequently than any other character—the only other character who does so is Bowman. When docking at the space station en route to the Moon, for example, Floyd “smile[s] at the stewardess and [says]: ‘Please give my compliments to Captain Tynes’” (39). These simple interactions and empty pleasantries are much sparser later in the novel. Floyd’s affable, polite character takes part in a wider arc of human nature that becomes more constrained, silent, and unemotional in space.
Moon-Watcher
Moon-Watcher is the central protagonist of Part 1. He is a “man-ape” who leads his tribe. His name refers to the fact that, as a child, he would gaze at the Moon and try to grasp it. This spark of curiosity in the Moon is a thread that develops throughout the novel, drawing human evolution onwards to “escap[e] from its planetary cradle” (185). The germ of this explorative striving comes from the “man-apes” and from Moon-Watcher, as their leader and representative. As Bowman represents modern humanity in an allegorical story of evolution, Moon-Watcher embodies the first steps toward the emergence of “primitive” humankind.
The development of Moon-Watcher’s capacity for emotion and complex thought receives special attention. As the novel begins, Moon-Watcher realizes that his father has died and “[feels] a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness” (3). This idea that Moon-Watcher contains the beginning of the emotional capacities that will define humanity recurs throughout this section. However, he is clearly not yet recognizable as a human being. For instance, he doesn’t remember people or objects that are not present, and it doesn’t occur to him to go to the rescue of other “man-apes” being attacked by a leopard because the “harsh logic of survival rule[s] out such fancies” (6). Moon-Watcher has the potential for humanity, but his circumstances don’t allow their development; it is these first seeds of humanity that the aliens nurture.
One-Ear is Moon-Watcher’s antagonist and the leader of the “Others,” another tribe with whom Moon-Watcher’s routinely clashes. He is also the first murder victim in both the novel and its world. The monolith initiates “a vague and diffuse sense of envy—of dissatisfaction with [Moon-Watcher’s] life” (14), which, in combination with the gift of tools, leads to violence and to the end of hunger. In Moon-Watcher, the novel depicts Violence and Technology Fueling Development.
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