Terminator And Philosophy: I'll Be Back, Therefore I Am - Plot & Excerpts
Is there any point, then, to this oath John forces upon the Terminator in T2? What is it about death that’s so bad, which in turn makes indiscriminate killing wrong? Given death’s inevitability, particularly with Judgment Day ever on the horizon, wouldn’t a stoic acceptance of eternal dreamless sleep be the most appropriate emotional response? Certainly, the Terminator has no emotional reaction to his killing—as Reese warns Sarah, “It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead!” On the other hand, John tries to enlighten the Terminator in T2 about how humans feel: “Look, maybe you don’t care if you live or die, but everybody’s not like that. We have feelings. We hurt. We’re afraid. You gotta learn this stuff. I’m not kidding. It’s important.” Draper seems to support John’s take on human nature: Death is a genuine evil. For death takes from us the objects of our emotional attachments, and sadness is a fitting response to the prospect of losing the object of an emotional attachment regardless of how unavoidable that loss might be.24 The Terminator finally realizes this when John gets upset at the T-101’s impending death: “I know now why you cry.”
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