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Section 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Minority Report, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Security vs. Liberty
Fate and Free Will
Trust and Paranoia
Summary
Analysis
Anderton returns to his house and frantically begins to pack, worrying that it was a mistake to show the precog card to Lisa. Hearing a floor board creak behind him, he turns to find a man pointing a pistol at him. “Didn’t she even hesitate?” Anderton asks, assuming the man is a police offer that Witwer and Lisa have sent. But, much to Anderton’s surprise, the man takes Anderton to see Kaplan.
Again, even though Anderton has no concrete evidence justifying his suspicions, he immediately—and almost calmly—attributes the intruder’s presence to Lisa and Witwer. This, of course, is where Anderton’s paranoia veers into unhelpful and unproductive territory, as it leads him to jump to conclusions without evidence.
Themes
Kaplan—an old man with thinning hair and “bright, bird-like eyes”—greets Anderton with curiosity and perplexity, asking him, “what’s the matter with you? Are you hopelessly insane? How could you kill a man you’ve never met?” Thinking of how to respond, Anderton suddenly realizes that the army must immediately process their duplicate cards, which is why Kaplan knows already. Pleading his innocence, Anderton tells Kaplan that Witwer and Lisa are “acting in concert, apparently.” Kaplan admits that this is a possibility, but explains that he simply cannot risk having Anderton run free. He directs his men to take Anderton to the police.
As readers will eventually discover, Kaplan is not as innocent as he seems and is actually pulling strings from the shadows like a puppeteer. Still, though, he appears to be genuinely curious and uncertain about Anderton, which suggests that Kaplan didn’t manipulate the data to say that Anderton was going to commit a murder. In other words, Kaplan’s fear and uncertainty in this passage see, to suggest that the precognitive data is correct, and Anderton is going to commit a crime—even if he’s certain that he won’t.
Themes
