2001: A Space Odyssey

by

Arthur C. Clarke

David Bowman (The Star-Child) Character Analysis

David Bowman is the first mate of the Discovery One. For much of the novel, Bowman is unaware of the ship’s true purpose: to investigate Iapetus for signs of alien life. However, after Hal kills the other members of the crew, Bowman is forced to disconnect Hal and is subsequently tasked with completing the mission on his own. This experience has a profound impact on Bowman, as do the many months of traveling alone in space. Not only does he learn to forgive Hal, a touching recognition of Hal’s humanity, but he also finds himself increasingly disinterested in human affairs. Given the nature of the journey ahead, such concerns now seem trivial, and Bowman commits himself instead to the task of representing humanity. Upon arriving at the second monolith, Bowman undergoes an eye-opening journey across the universe, eventually arriving at an alien-made hotel suite. There, Bowman is reborn as the Star-Child,his mind and body reshaped by the weaver. In his new form, Bowman destroys Earth’s nuclear arsenal, saving humanity from imminent self-annihilation. However, Bowman’s plans for the future of Earth remain ambiguous.

David Bowman (The Star-Child) Quotes in 2001: A Space Odyssey

The 2001: A Space Odyssey quotes below are all either spoken by David Bowman (The Star-Child) or refer to David Bowman (The Star-Child) . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Collaboration vs. Individualism Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

The toolmakers had been remade by their tools.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

With the need for international cooperation more urgent than ever, there were still as many frontiers as in any earlier age. In a million years, the human race had lost few of its aggressive instincts; along symbolic lines visible only to politicians, the thirty-eight nuclear powers watched one another with belligerent anxiety. Among them, they possessed sufficient megatonnage to remove the entire surface crust of the planet. Although there had been—miraculously—no use of atomic weapons, this situation could hardly last forever.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Moon-Watcher , Heywood Floyd
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

The ship was only thirty days from Earth, yet David Bowman sometimes found it hard to believe that he had ever known any other existence than the closed little world of Discovery. All his years of training, all his earlier missions to the Moon and Mars, seemed to belong to another man, in another life.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Page Number: 107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that jest contained.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

Sometimes, during lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and as meaningless as the murmur of waves on the beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Frank Poole
Page Number: 136
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

Nowadays, one could always tell when Hal was about to make an unscheduled announcement. Routine, automatic reports, or replies to questions that had been put to him, had no preliminaries; but when he was initiating his own outputs there would be a brief electronic throat-clearing. It was an idiosyncrasy that he acquired during the last few weeks; later, it if became annoying, they might do something about it.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 171
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

Deliberate error was unthinkable. Even the concealment of truth filled him with a sense of imperfection, of wrongness—of what, in a human being, would have been called guilt. For like his makers, Hal had been created innocent; but, all too soon, a snake had entered his electronic Eden. For the last hundred million miles, he had been brooding over the secret he could not share with Poole and Bowman. He had been living a lie; and the time was fast approaching when his colleagues must learn that he had helped to deceive them.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

It if it could happen to a man, then it could happen to Hal; and with that knowledge the bitterness and the sense of betrayal he felt toward the computer began to fade.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to classical plays—especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare—or poetry readings from Discovery’s enormous library of recorded sounds. The problems they dealt with, however, seemed too remote, or so easily resolved with a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Page Number: 229
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 41 Quotes

Where in God’s name am I? Bowman asked himself; and even as he posed the question, he felt certain that he could never know the answer. It seemed that space had been turned inside out: this was not a place for Man.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Monolith
Page Number: 263
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

So–it was all a fake, though a fantastically careful one. And it was clearly not intended to deceive but rather—he hoped—to reassure. That was a very comforting thought; nevertheless he would not remove his suit until he had completed his voyage of exploration.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Related Symbols: The Hotel Suite , The Monolith
Page Number: 287
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 46 Quotes

For in the eons since their last meeting, much had been learned by the weaver; and the material on which he practiced his art was not of an infinitely finer texture. But whether it should be permitted to form part of his still-growing tapestry, only the future could tell.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , The Weaver
Related Symbols: The Monolith
Page Number: 292-293
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 47 Quotes

Then he waited, marshalling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Related Symbols: The Monolith
Page Number: 297
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire 2001: A Space Odyssey LitChart as a printable PDF.
2001: A Space Odyssey PDF

David Bowman (The Star-Child) Quotes in 2001: A Space Odyssey

The 2001: A Space Odyssey quotes below are all either spoken by David Bowman (The Star-Child) or refer to David Bowman (The Star-Child) . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Collaboration vs. Individualism Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

The toolmakers had been remade by their tools.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

With the need for international cooperation more urgent than ever, there were still as many frontiers as in any earlier age. In a million years, the human race had lost few of its aggressive instincts; along symbolic lines visible only to politicians, the thirty-eight nuclear powers watched one another with belligerent anxiety. Among them, they possessed sufficient megatonnage to remove the entire surface crust of the planet. Although there had been—miraculously—no use of atomic weapons, this situation could hardly last forever.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Moon-Watcher , Heywood Floyd
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

The ship was only thirty days from Earth, yet David Bowman sometimes found it hard to believe that he had ever known any other existence than the closed little world of Discovery. All his years of training, all his earlier missions to the Moon and Mars, seemed to belong to another man, in another life.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Page Number: 107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that jest contained.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

Sometimes, during lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and as meaningless as the murmur of waves on the beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Frank Poole
Page Number: 136
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

Nowadays, one could always tell when Hal was about to make an unscheduled announcement. Routine, automatic reports, or replies to questions that had been put to him, had no preliminaries; but when he was initiating his own outputs there would be a brief electronic throat-clearing. It was an idiosyncrasy that he acquired during the last few weeks; later, it if became annoying, they might do something about it.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 171
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

Deliberate error was unthinkable. Even the concealment of truth filled him with a sense of imperfection, of wrongness—of what, in a human being, would have been called guilt. For like his makers, Hal had been created innocent; but, all too soon, a snake had entered his electronic Eden. For the last hundred million miles, he had been brooding over the secret he could not share with Poole and Bowman. He had been living a lie; and the time was fast approaching when his colleagues must learn that he had helped to deceive them.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

It if it could happen to a man, then it could happen to Hal; and with that knowledge the bitterness and the sense of betrayal he felt toward the computer began to fade.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , Hal , Frank Poole
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to classical plays—especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare—or poetry readings from Discovery’s enormous library of recorded sounds. The problems they dealt with, however, seemed too remote, or so easily resolved with a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Page Number: 229
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 41 Quotes

Where in God’s name am I? Bowman asked himself; and even as he posed the question, he felt certain that he could never know the answer. It seemed that space had been turned inside out: this was not a place for Man.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Monolith
Page Number: 263
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

So–it was all a fake, though a fantastically careful one. And it was clearly not intended to deceive but rather—he hoped—to reassure. That was a very comforting thought; nevertheless he would not remove his suit until he had completed his voyage of exploration.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Related Symbols: The Hotel Suite , The Monolith
Page Number: 287
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 46 Quotes

For in the eons since their last meeting, much had been learned by the weaver; and the material on which he practiced his art was not of an infinitely finer texture. But whether it should be permitted to form part of his still-growing tapestry, only the future could tell.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child) , The Weaver
Related Symbols: The Monolith
Page Number: 292-293
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 47 Quotes

Then he waited, marshalling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.

Related Characters: David Bowman (The Star-Child)
Related Symbols: The Monolith
Page Number: 297
Explanation and Analysis: