Trust and Paranoia Theme Analysis

In “The Minority Report,” Dick examines trust and paranoia through his protagonist, Anderton, a Police Commissioner who thinks he is being framed for a crime. Insecure from the start, Anderton becomes paranoid after reading on a precognitive card that he will murder a stranger named Kaplan within a week. Quick to assume the worst in others, he imagines that his new assistant, Witwer, is working with the Senate to oust him as Commissioner. He also entertains the possibility that his wife, Lisa, is involved in the plot. Throughout much of the story, Anderton is uncertain as to what is real and true. He scrutinizes other characters’ statements and motives, as he struggles to understand the precognitive dynamic in which he is entangled. Although Anderton is incorrect on certain points, his paranoia is not mere subjective delusion. In fact, it is rational and necessary, as he is the target of a complex plot involving mind-bending technology and secretive authority figures. In showing the rational basis of paranoia, Dick encourages the reader to be suspicious and investigatory like Anderton and to question bureaucratic structures with powerful technologies.

Throughout the story, Anderton reacts with suspicion to the other characters. “The Minority Report” establishes Anderton’s paranoid mental state in the introductory scene through his insecure reaction to Witwer, who is more physically attractive and confident than Anderton. After reading the majority report, Anderton suspects that Witwer is working with the Senate to frame him: “This creature is out to get my job. The Senate is getting at me through him.” Anderton even thinks Lisa may be involved in the plot. Shocked that she invites Witwer to dinner, Anderton wonders to himself, “What were the chances of his wife’s friendliness being benign, accidental?” His paranoid inner dialogue continues: “Did a covert awareness pass between them? He couldn’t tell. God, he was beginning to suspect everybody—not only his wife and Witwer, but a dozen members of his staff.” Fleming, who appears following the car crash Kaplan staged, seems helpful at first, taking advantage of Anderton’s paranoia. He provides Anderton with money and a new identity so that he may evade the police and avoid being sent to a detention camp. Fleming tells Anderton that Lisa is behind the plot, and that “Kaplan is working directly with Witwer.” Although Anderton already suspects his wife, he does not necessarily believe Fleming’s claim that she is “back of the whole thing.” Later, when Fleming attempts to murder Lisa, Anderton stops him. However, “It seemed strange that Anderton waited so long” to do so—an instance of his pervasive uncertainty.

While Anderton’s paranoia certainly leads him to suspect the wrong people, his paranoia proves helpful as it attunes him to the fact that something is terribly wrong and that he is somehow in the center of it all. His paranoia forces him to think critically about the people he comes in contact with—his own wife included—to ultimately piece together the plot against him. His paranoia, though distracting at times, acts as a kind of intuition that spurs Anderton to discover the truth and question the world around him. After his initial conversation with Kaplan, Anderton even questions his own sanity: “Perhaps he was trapped in a closed, meaningless time-circle with no motive and no beginning. In fact, he was almost ready to concede that he was the victim of a weary, neurotic fantasy, spawned by growing insecurity.” Given the pressures and complexities of the situation, Anderton’s response is understandable. In fact, the attentive reader will see that such a scenario is entirely possible. In the world of “The Minority Report,” readers learn that they must scrutinize not only the statements and motives of every character, but also their own perceptions of what is real and true. In this way, they become like Anderton, learning that it is rational to be paranoid and to question everything.

Dick introduces various data points—Anderton’s experiences, suspicions, and theories; other characters’ statements and actions; different interpretations of the precognitive reports—which contradict or modify each other. He does so without always providing clarifications through an all-knowing hero or authoritative explanations. For example, does precognitive information cancel out the future act to which it corresponds, as Kaplan suggests in his speech? Neither Anderton nor Dick explicitly answer this question, thus readers are left to consider it for themselves. Even when Dick does provide authoritative statements, the reader cannot trust what he says. Indeed, Dick presents, overturns, modifies, and, in certain cases, reinstates various hypotheses over the course of the story. In this way, he produces a reader who is suspicious and paranoid, and who cannot say with absolute certainty what has just transpired. Ultimately, Dick is not interested in providing tidy explanations, but in provoking the reader to question reality.