2001: A Space Odyssey And The Odyssey

2001 A Space Odyssey and the Odyssey have many similarities. The Ancient Greeks at the time of the Odyssey were wanting to keep themselves separated from the “barbarians”. The Greeks wanted to become more civilized during this time of discovery and exploration Homer portrays the beasts/peoples in the Odyssey as uncivilized and puts them in the same class as the civilized Greeks. An example of this is the Cyclops. The Cyclops is a pastoral nomad that goes against the customs of hospitality and lacks ingenuity. One huge difference between the Cyclops and the Greeks is in the way they use the stick. The Cyclops has a huge tall stick that he uses to walk around with. This stick is something that the Greeks would have used to build the …show more content…
First, there’s the monoliths who serve the same role in 2001 as the gods in the Odyssey. Everything that happens is with the help of the gods. Example would be that the Odysseus can’t even shoot an arrow without the help of Athena’s directing the motion of the arrow. Every now and then the gods help Odysseus. Also, the monoliths do the same. They are these out of this world type of mysterious objects which send signals to Jupiter in a similar way in how the gods answered to Zeus/Jupiter. The plot is guided by the monoliths. They jumpstart human evolution and also send Bowman to Jupiter, and create the starchild, etc. In the “Dawn of Man”, we have a bunch of dumb, pathetic apes who are trying to survive. The monolith appears, and one of the apes learns how to make and use tools and weapons. In the way that Odysseus acts is shown as a comparison between civilized and uncivilized. The ape using the tool shows the difference between what is human and what is animal. Hal is portrayed as the Cyclops. He is the one-eyed beast that kills the main character’s shipmates until he is finally put to sleep. The film tells all that Hal is not human but he seems like the most human character in the film. He is the only character to show fear, has trouble telling lies and even shows signs of pride. Giving these very human traits to a non-human character is kind of a …show more content…
He strings his bow and uses it to kill the suitors. Bowman is intelligent, strong-willed and has no emotion. Bowman is used to show the next step in evolution and that the traits we associated with him are super human like. By comparing the actions of Bowman and the emotional reactions of non-humans, the ideal man is presented by Kubrick in the same way that Homer uses Odysseus to show the difference between civilized and the uncivilized. Having all these similarities, I would think that the title was chosen with Homer’s epic poem in mind. The comparison’s show that 2001 has been written in extensive relations to the HAL 9000 Computer, but has been ignored regarding other aspects of the movie – the concept of human beings being enslaved by their own technology. There is a strong evidence that HAL 9000 Computer is somewhat representing IBM and it would seem that Kubrick has a disapproval of this giant corporation. In 2001 Hal’s systematic extermination of the sleeping crew may have been Kubrick’s statement about this historic tragedy (the selling of basic computing machines to the Nazi regime) which IBM was never held accountable for. Kubrick gives warnings that computing corporations could gain control over every aspect of our lives and turn us into disposable cogs in a giant technology wheel. This explains the importance of the metaphor showing shots of the yellow spinning bone thrown by the ape and the shots of Frank Poole spinning through