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David Bowman (The Star-Child)
HAL 9000, the onboard artificial intelligence computer of Discovery One, is a sophisticated and supposedly infallible computer program designed to operate the ship and communicate with its occupants. Apart from his robotic personality, Hal is nearly indistinguishable from a human, at least conversationally. He can pass the Turing test with ease and seamlessly melds with his human crewmates, Frank and Dave. However, as the journey progresses, Hal’s passive, easygoing personality undergoes a shift. Forced to conceal the mission’s true objectives from his human crewmates, Hal begins to feel guilt, his integrity compromised by his deception. In time, this guilt results in computational error: Hal incorrectly predicts the failure of the AE-35 unit. Subsequently threatened with disconnection—to him, tantamount to death—Hal resorts to increasingly drastic measures, first killing Poole and eventually the rest of the crew to cover his tracks. Ultimately, Bowman is forced to disconnect him. This experience deeply troubles Bowman: though not flesh and blood, Hal not only thinks and speaks like a human, but he also feels and fears like one, too. More broadly, then, Hal’s character raises the question of what it really means to be human.
Hal Quotes in 2001: A Space Odyssey
The 2001: A Space Odyssey quotes below are all either spoken by Hal or refer to Hal . 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:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
The toolmakers had been remade by their tools.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Get the entire 2001: A Space Odyssey LitChart as a printable PDF.
Hal Quotes in 2001: A Space Odyssey
The 2001: A Space Odyssey quotes below are all either spoken by Hal or refer to Hal . 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:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
The toolmakers had been remade by their tools.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
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.
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.
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.
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.
