Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory – by Leonard F. Wheat

There is one very excellent resource for understanding the film 2001: A Space Odyssey:

Leonard F. Wheat's book "Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory".
(You can read excerpts here, here, and more here, here, and here/here.)

In the book Wheat covers three themes (what Rob Ager calls "hidden narratives") of 2001:

• The Odysseus Allegory
• The Zarathustra Allegory
• The Man-Machine Symbiosis (Allegory)

If you want to understand Kubrick's 2001, you have to read Wheat's book, there is no way around it. Alas, the book has some flaws (which however do not impede on the usefulness of Wheat's work):

• He calls the "The Man-Machine Symbiosis" theme an allegory to Arthur C. Clarke's work, when it is more preciously one of the (not particularly hidden) themes of 2001.
• He doesn't distinguish between rather certain hypotheses (like say, that there is a Odysseus Allegory), plausible but not quiet certain hypotheses (like say, his interpretation of TMA-1), and somewhat more far-fetched hypotheses (like say, his take on the name Heywood R. Floyd) – everything he has gathered is presented on equal footing.

One could probably find other flaws, but all in all it is an excellent work and for those of us who do not have intimate knowledge of Greek mythology (I know, I know, what on oversight…) or Nietsche's work, this book is immensely helpful.

And while I can not prove it (yet), I think Wheat has missed (at least) one more theme in Kubrick's 2001 – more of that later… Until then, don't take his three Allegories as an exhaustive list.