67 pages • 2-hour read
The Passengers
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child sexual abuse.
The Illusion of Control in a Technologically Saturated World
In The Passengers, the proliferation of autonomous vehicle technology fosters a dangerous illusion of control, suggesting that humanity’s increasing reliance on artificial intelligence creates new and unforeseen vulnerabilities. The novel uses the hijacking of eight driverless cars to explore how ceding human judgment to supposedly infallible systems erodes moral responsibility and makes society susceptible to manipulation. The novel argues that true control lies not in perfecting technology but in retaining the human capacity for moral reasoning.
The central premise of the hijacking immediately dismantles the illusion of safety that autonomous cars are built upon. The Passengers have varying levels of comfort with driverless cars. The technology’s supposedly “idiot proof” design only slightly reassures Claire Arden, who initially expresses that she doesn’t “like not being in control” (6). However, the moment the Hacker takes over, any sense of security the Passengers had evaporates. The car, once a symbol of convenience and progress, becomes a prison. The Hacker uses technology to render the Passengers helpless, unable to steer, stop, or even open the doors. This sudden and total loss of autonomy is a metaphor for the broader societal risk of entrusting critical functions to complex systems that few understand. By turning a tool of safety into a weapon, the Hacker demonstrates the danger of absolute trust in technology by showing how giving up manual control and human judgment to AI creates a weakness that those seeking societal power or control can exploit.
The novel deepens this critique by revealing that the official system is as morally compromised as the Hacker’s intervention is violent. The government’s secret AI program, which calculates a person’s value to society to determine who lives or dies in an accident, represents the ultimate abdication of moral control. This data-driven framework, which Jack Larsson’s Vehicle Inquest Jury is designed to protect, substitutes cold calculation for ethics. The system quantifies human worth based on factors like income, criminal record, and health, removing empathy from life-or-death decisions. The hijacking exposes this logic as flawed by inviting the public to engage in a similar, albeit more transparent, process. Thus, the novel suggests that the greatest danger isn’t a malevolent hacker but a society that willingly outsources its moral judgment to an algorithm, creating an illusion of objective control while simultaneously eroding its own humanity.
How the Digital World’s Hypervisibility Drives Public Performance
The Passengers explores the fragile nature of identity in an age of digital surveillance, arguing that morality has become a public performance. The novel exposes the significant gap between characters’ carefully constructed public personas and their private realities, as the Hacker’s systematic unmasking of their secrets critiques a voyeuristic society that is quick to pass judgment. As each Passenger’s hidden life is broadcast to a global audience, the novel suggests that “truth” itself is often a strategic performance, shaped by what individuals choose to conceal and reveal.
The hijacking catalyzes the dismantling of the Passengers’ moral facades. Before the incident, each character maintains a public identity that conceals a significant secret. Sofia Bradbury is a beloved actress and philanthropist, a persona that hides her complicity in her husband’s history of child sexual abuse. Sam Cole presents himself as a dedicated family man, a performance that allows him to sustain a bigamous marriage with a second family. The Hacker’s game functions as a tribunal that forces these private truths into the public eye. As each secret is exposed, that Passenger’s carefully managed identity shatters, revealing that their public morality was a curated image. This systematic unmasking suggests that a person’s perceived character is often a fragile construct, dependent on the secrets they can successfully keep.
The novel further argues that the act of judging is also a performance, particularly when done under public scrutiny. Once the Vehicle Inquest Jury members realize that they’re “being broadcast globally” (76), their behavior changes. Jack Larsson, initially dismissive and arrogant, modulates his tone to perform the role of a capable leader for the worldwide audience. Similarly, the public, empowered by social media, engages in a performance of moral outrage and judgment. They use hashtags to reduce complex individuals to simplistic narratives, celebrating or condemning them based on the Hacker’s curated revelations. The character of Jude Harrison is the ultimate testament to this theme, as he’s a complete fabrication designed to manipulate the sympathies of both Libby and the audience. Through these layers of deception, the novel suggests that in a hyper-visible world, authenticity is scarce, and both virtue and condemnation are often just roles being played for an audience.
The Corruption of Justice When Human Worth Is Quantified
In The Passengers, the Hacker critiques systems of justice that attempt to quantify human life, exposing such frameworks as inherently corrupt and biased. The novel draws a stark parallel between the government’s secret, data-driven program that determines who survives a car crash and the Hacker’s public, deadly game. Through these two competing forms of judgment, the novel demonstrates that when morality is reduced to a calculation, it inevitably caters to the interests of the powerful and privileged while devaluing the lives of the marginalized.
The officially sanctioned system of justice, the Vehicle Inquest Jury, is revealed as a facade designed to uphold a morally bankrupt government program. This secret system assigns a numerical value to every citizen based on metrics like income, health, and social standing, allowing a car’s AI to sacrifice a “less valuable” person in an unavoidable accident. The jury’s purpose isn’t to seek truth but to produce verdicts that legitimize this “social cleansing,” as Libby realizes when the permanently appointed jurors dismiss her inquiries and deem crucial information “classified.” This process represents a corruption of justice, where the state operates a system that protects those it deems important while sacrificing others, under the guise of objective, technological impartiality. Justice, in this framework, isn’t blind but is programmed to see and protect power.
The Hacker’s game is a dark mirror of the state’s program, forcing the public to participate in the same flawed moral calculus. Just as the government’s highly biased information about citizens determines survival (and assigns blame) in autonomous vehicle accidents, the Hacker provides brief, biased dossiers on each Passenger and then invites the world to decide who should live and die. The public’s subsequent voting patterns reveal how easily prejudice sways such judgments, most notably in the public’s swift decision to condemn Bilquis, an asylum seeker. Only after her death does the Hacker reveal her tragic and heroic backstory, exposing the injustice of a verdict based on superficial data. His game is a brutal critique, demonstrating that whether a secret government algorithm or a global social media poll carries out the judgment, the act of quantifying human worth leads to biased and unjust outcomes. Jack Larsson’s eventual acquittal for his role in the system is the novel’s final indictment, proving that such corrupt frameworks ultimately shield the powerful from accountability.
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