Free Will vs. External Control Theme Analysis

The Sirens of Titan explores one of the most fundamental philosophical questions facing humankind: does free will exist, or are people actually being controlled by exterior forces (albeit ones that might be impossible to see or understand)? The novel indicates that free will does not exist, by depicting many examples of people being controlled by exterior forces without realizing it. These examples include the Martian Army who are controlled by antennas inserted into their bodies, and the revelation at the end of the novel that the whole of human history has been the creation of an alien species, the Tralfamadorians, in an elaborate effort to help a Tralfamadorian explorer named Salo who got stranded during a mission. Yet while the novel suggests that free will is usually an illusion, it also shows examples of times when people rebel against the forces controlling them, suggesting that there may be rare moments when it is possible to exercise free will.

The novel suggests that humans are desperate to believe that they have free will—and even more radically, that they have control over their own fates—yet also shows that this is usually a hopeless desire. Early in the novel, the wealthy adventurer Winston Niles Rumfoord reveals that by travelling through a chrono-synclastic infundibulum—which allows him to move through space in the form of a wave—he has gained a kind of omniscience about the destiny of the universe. The people around Rumfoord are resentful of his predictions about the future. His wife, Beatrice, dreams of being the “mistress of her own fate” and is annoyed by her husband’s prophesizing, which she calls his “omniscient bullying.” Similarly, the wealthiest man in the U.S., Malachi Constant, is horrified by Rumfoord’s prophecy that he (Constant) will end up having a child with Beatrice on Mars. Nonetheless, Beatrice and Constant’s protests about Rumfoord’s vision of the future is fruitless, as his vision ends up coming true. 

Rumfoord’s own reaction to his prophetic powers suggests that the revelation of humanity’s lack of free will is depressing for everyone, even someone like Rumfoord who has omniscient insight into the future. As Rumfoord explains, “When I ran my space ship into the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, it came to me in a flash that everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been […] Knowing that rather takes the glamour out of fortunetelling.” Rather than delighting in his own prophetic insight, Rumfoord finds it depressing. He, like others, seems resistant to embracing the idea that people do not have free will.

The idea that human free will is an illusion appears to be confirmed at the end of the novel. It’s revealed that the Tralfamadorians intervened in human history, causing humans to evolve such that they would develop the technology to rescue Salo, who was stranded on Titan for 200,000 years while on a mission across the universe to deliver a message. Not only was human action determined by an external factor, but the whole of human history took place merely in order to produce a single part to repair Salo’s spaceship, which leaves humanity looking rather trivial and unimportant. At the same time, the condition of not having free will isn’t unique to humans. Tralfamadorians themselves are machines and thus don’t appear to have free will either. When describing Salo, the narrator notes, “As a machine, he had to do what he was supposed to do.” Ultimately, however, Salo is able to betray his orders, an exceptional feat for a machine. This suggests that even in extreme cases, it might be possible to exercise free will.

The description of Salo having to obey orders links him to the Martian Army, a group of humans whose memories are erased and who are controlled by antennae implanted into their bodies which cause them pain whenever they are doing something they are not supposed to. This initially appears to have the effect of placing the soldiers under total control. Constant (who is renamed Unk after being inducted into the army and having his memories erased) ends up killing his best friend, Stony Stevenson, because he is essentially forced to by the combination of the antenna and the program of forced amnesia which stops him recognizing Stony in the first place. This suggests that without free will, neither individual identity nor morality matter. However, the possibility of asserting one’s own free will even in the face of external control emerges when Unk finds letters from an anonymous person filled with information and encouragement to rebel against the army. When Unk sees the signature of the letter-writer and discovers that he wrote the letters to himself, he becomes “the only deserter in the history of the Army of Mars.”

The letters Unk writes to himself indicate that overriding external control in order to assert free will is difficult and painful, but that it can be done. As Unk states in the letters, “Almost everything I know for sure has come from fighting the pain from my antenna […] Whenever I start to turn my head and look at something, and the pain comes, I keep turning my head anyway, because I know I am going to see something I’m not supposed to see […] The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn.” Of course, by the end of the novel, Unk’s rebellion is placed within the context of another, broader system of control: the Tralfamadorians’ shaping of human history. Even though Unk rebelled against the army, it was the Tralfamadorians’ plan that compelled him to do so. Moreover, the Tralfamadorians themselves are controlled by other forces or systems—such as Salo who must obey the instructions he was given back on his home planet. Yet while all these different systems of determination and control indicates that free will is indeed an illusion, the novel nonetheless also suggests that there is something noble and important in acting as if one is free and rebelling against these systems of control.