Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Collaboration vs. Individualism
Tools and Human Evolution
Space Travel
The Perils of Knowledge
Summary
Analysis
Addressing the base’s staff, Floyd conveys the President’s appreciation of their work while also stressing caution and patience given the circumstances. Dr. Michaels recounts the events leading up to the discovery and excavation of TMA-1, or Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-One, a mysterious black rectangular slab unlike anything seen before on Earth. Named after the strange magnetic patterns which led to its detection, the slab seems to “swallow” the light that hits it and has almost no surface detail. Projecting a photo of it, Dr. Michaels explains that TMA-1, being roughly three million years old, has nothing to do with the Chinese, as was first suspected. Instead, it is the first sign of intelligent life beyond Earth.
The revelation of TMA-1 proves the existence of extraterrestrial life—a shock to the characters in the novel, but not to the novel’s readership. For both, however, the monolith’s function and provenance remains a mystery. Being over three million years old and of indecipherable make and origin, it is yet unclear what relation the monolith has to its human subjects.
Themes
