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Section 3
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
On the drive back to town, Anderton mulls over his increasingly complicated situation. One of Kaplan’s men interrupts his thoughts, asking, “For the first time in history, Precrime goes wrong? […] Maybe there’ve been other innocent people—right?” Beginning to feel overwhelmed, Anderton admits the possibility and returns to his thoughts. He wonders if “he was trapped in a closed, meaningless time-circle with no motive and no beginning.” Contemplating his own sanity, he further considers the possibility that he is “the victim of a weary, neurotic fantasy, spawned by growing insecurity.”
Here, the story returns to the question of if there are innocent people in the detention camps, convicted of a crime they have no intention of committing, just like Anderton. Meanwhile, Anderton’s inner dialogue is becoming increasingly frantic and paranoid, as he no longer trusts his own perception of reality. He also raises the possibility of a “time-circle.” Though this idea is never again explicitly explained or addressed, it reminds readers of the complex relationship between fate (precognition) and free will in the story—it’s not always clear which force is at play and which will win out.
Themes
Anderton is jolted from his thoughts by squealing tires. The car crashes head-on into a bread truck, which has suddenly materialized before them. Suffering acute pain from a blow to the head, Anderton vaguely realizes that a man is dragging him from the car. The heavyset man introduces himself as Fleming. With sirens wailing in the distance, Fleming hurriedly gives Anderton a package with money and new identification. “This whole business was worked out carefully […] The card was set to pop the day Witwer appeared,” Fleming explains. “Who’s behind it?” asks Anderton. “Your wife,” Fleming responds.
Fleming complicates Anderton’s understanding of who he can trust—someone close to him, like his wife, might be conspiring against him, while someone supposedly against him, like one of Kaplan’s men, might actually be on his side. What makes Fleming’s assertion about Lisa’s culpability so impactful is that Anderton already harbored his own suspicions about Lisa prior to this moment, forcing readers to seriously consider that Lisa may, in fact, be the villain.
Themes
