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John Anderton
The antagonist of the story, Kaplan is an old, retired General of the Army of the Federated Westbloc Alliance. He is plotting to discredit Precrime so that the army may reassume the domestic policing powers it held before the end of the last war. Kaplan has other people do his dirty work for him, using Fleming to follow and surveil Anderton and, it’s implied, planting Page at Precrime in order to receive information more quickly and directly. Significantly, Kaplan does not hold animosity towards Anderton, but simply sees him as a pawn in his power play to destabilize and ultimately take down Precrime. In his speech at the army rally, Kaplan compares the majority report (which states that Anderton will murder Kaplan) to the minority report (which states that Anderton, having learned about his future crime, will resolve not to kill Kaplan) in order to invalidate the Precrime system. He specifically suggests that “As soon as precognitive information is obtained, it cancels itself out,” and thus that “there can be no valid knowledge about the future.” By acknowledging Anderton, who is present at the rally, Kaplan hopes to demonstrate that the majority report, which predicted that Anderton would kill Kaplan, is incorrect. However, Anderton murders Kaplan, thereby making the majority report correct and saving Precrime’s reputation.
Kaplan Quotes in The Minority Report
The The Minority Report quotes below are all either spoken by Kaplan or refer to Kaplan. 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:
).
Section 9
Quotes
“But there can be no valid knowledge about the future. As soon as precognitive information is obtained, it cancels itself out. The assertion that this man will commit a future crime is paradoxical. The very act of possessing this data renders it spurious. In every case, without exception, the report of the three police precogs has invalidated their own data. If no arrests had been made, there would still have been no crimes committed.”
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Section 10
Quotes
“Each report was different,” Anderton concluded. “Each was unique. But two of them agreed on one point. If left free, I would kill Kaplan. That created the illusion of a majority report. Actually, that’s all it was—an illusion. ‘Donna’ and ‘Mike’ previewed the same event—but in two totally different time-paths, occurring under totally different situations.”
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Kaplan Quotes in The Minority Report
The The Minority Report quotes below are all either spoken by Kaplan or refer to Kaplan. 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:
).
Section 9
Quotes
“But there can be no valid knowledge about the future. As soon as precognitive information is obtained, it cancels itself out. The assertion that this man will commit a future crime is paradoxical. The very act of possessing this data renders it spurious. In every case, without exception, the report of the three police precogs has invalidated their own data. If no arrests had been made, there would still have been no crimes committed.”
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 10
Quotes
“Each report was different,” Anderton concluded. “Each was unique. But two of them agreed on one point. If left free, I would kill Kaplan. That created the illusion of a majority report. Actually, that’s all it was—an illusion. ‘Donna’ and ‘Mike’ previewed the same event—but in two totally different time-paths, occurring under totally different situations.”
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