Guide Mentor

Character Role Analysis

The Monolith

The monolith isn't a traditional mentor character in that it doesn't provide cryptic words of wisdom or items needed to complete the quest. But just like a mentor character, the monolith sends humanity on its quest of evolutionary discovery. It's responsible for Bowman's journey to Jupiter and for guiding his evolution into the Star Child. Either way you slice it, the monolith, and by extension its extraterrestrial creators, are teaching humanity and school's been in session for 4 million years.