The Minority Report Summary

Philip K. Dick – “The Minority Report” Unseen Commentary

The science fiction short story “The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick explores how autocratic societies lead to individuality being suppressed, with power replacing personality as the main defining quality of any identity. This is all particularly evident in the passage where Anderton makes his way to Kaplan at the rally for a greeting before murdering him. Through the wide use of metaphorical language and other carefully chosen descriptors such as adjectives and adverbs, Dick conveys how autocratic power suffocates a population of free will and imposes extreme influence on the people. Since there is no presence of any kind of personality or individuality, the very thing exercising
He consistently uses symbols of power to describe Kaplan, with many of these symbols being objects of clothing. Kaplan, who initially wore “the vest, […] the conservative business suit”, is in this passage portrayed as wearing “his service bars, […] his visored cap”. Here, Dick chooses two lists of items of clothing – both representatives of two contrasting levels of power, with the latter being the higher – to describe Kaplan, as though power is what defines him. This is emphasized with Dick’s choice of pronouns: in the first list, he consistently uses the pronoun “the” to precede the business-like items of clothing representative of little power. With the second list, however, he consistently uses the pronoun “his” to precede the military-like items of clothing representative of high power. By assigning the more personal pronoun to the second list, it is almost as Dick is implying that power gives Kaplan his identity; power is what defines him and brings him to life. When not describing him with power, Dick portrays Kaplan as just yet another person who has lost individuality as a result of the strength of power. Kaplan is described as having “steely” fingers and moving “stiffly”; both of these descriptors indicate a cold, unfeeling person incapable of emotion – the adjective “steely” has
Anderton is the only character in this passage with any form of personal identity present, unlike everyone else. Not only does he have individuality and emotion, but he also differentiates starkly from everyone else in the manner that he is an anomaly in a trend; the fact that he is attempting to rise up against the oppression of Kaplan’s power by aiming to murder him instead of allowing him to discredit the Precrime system sets him apart as a distinctive identity. Whilst everyone else has fallen to power, becoming defined by it (or lack thereof, for the crowd of people), Anderton is going against power, refusing to allow it to control him. He is at first “engulfed” by the crowd, emphasizing his singularity in his actions. The meaning of the verb is particularly effective in describing him as a lone outsider due to how connotations can be made to a weaker entity being swallowed up by a larger, more powerful body; it is almost as if the powerless crowd in their oppression actually holds some degree of power just by conforming together into the system designed for them by the ruling authorities – a degree of power that Anderton does not hold by not being part of them. Dick nevertheless singles him out as “forc[ing]” his way past the crowd to the platform; the particular use of this verb creates the image of