University of Virginia

Control Yourselves:

How Fate is Determined in The Box

Macie O’Connor

ENWR 1510 - 018

Professor Britta Rowe

February 23, 2018

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The Box by Richard Kelly presents its audience with the story of a sinister moral

dilemma: the choice of whether or not to receive one million dollars at the cost of taking the life

of another human being. Throughout the film, protagonists Norma and Arthur Lewis are

presented with this situation and are forced to make several tough decisions. In the end, nothing

works out in favor of the protagonists, as they fail to pass the “test” of the illusive Employers and

do not get to retain their ordinary family lives. Because of this, viewers are left to ponder

whether their misfortune is the result of their choices, or if it is the doing of forces beyond their

control. After contemplating this question, I realized that I personally think that these characters

appear to lack control over their fate more so than they have it. While interpretations of the film

could certainly vary, it is apparent that the protagonists in The Box are controlled by an outside

entity, and that their future is predetermined no matter what actions they take.

Within the realm of philosophy, Universal Determinism (UD) is the doctrine that “every

state of affairs follows necessarily from the preceding one” (Ott). To elaborate, it means that

each event that happens is essentially already going to happen, as a result of whatever event

occurred previously. This philosophy implies that we as people have no “free will,” because

everything that we do is predetermined. Even though people may feel as if they make choices,

Universal Determinism asserts that such choices are already destined to happen. This concept of

UD can certainly be seen in the plot of The Box; the most crucial components of the plot concern

the interactions of cause and effect and free will. As one of the chosen test couples, Norma and

Arthur are faced with the choice of pressing the button or not pressing it, and they mull over the

consequences of each choice. As they learn from Arlington Steward, if they choose to press it,

someone else will die (Kelly, 00:16:15). It is revealed later in the film that the wife of the couple

who previously pressed the button is the person who dies (1:30:10). With this fact in mind, it
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becomes evident that Universal Determinism is in effect within the film, because one action,

either pressing the button or the woman’s death, predetermines the carrying out of the other

action. Norma does in fact press the button, and the previous button pusher does in fact die. It is

unclear exactly how these two events are related or how one is physically able to invoke the

other, but nonetheless, they both occur.

A similar philosophical concept related to Universal Determinism is the idea of “The

Death of the Subject.” This entails the worry that “our innermost selves are the product of forces

beyond our control”; it is the notion that our own identity, character, and values are an illusion

(Ott). Death of the Subject is certainly woven into many of the characters within The Box. For

example, the situation in which the Lewis’s find themselves does not arise from their own doing,

and their “selves” have no say in the matter. Furthermore, if Universal Determinism is in place,

then the actions that they take do not have any true effect, because what happens is beyond their

control. This is also seen in the embodiment of Mr. Steward and the other “Employees.” If these

entities are being controlled by a higher power (the Employers), then they too are the victims of

the Death of the Subject construct. Having no autonomy or concrete identity, these people or

“vessels” and are not their true selves. Everything that they do is under the jurisdiction of the

Employers (00:17:43), and whoever they may have been before is lost.

One the other hand, one might argue that the fate of the Lewis’s is not predetermined, and

that they do in fact have free will. One definition of “free” is that an action is considered free if

the actor in some way could have done otherwise. In a situation where an actor could not have

done otherwise, they did not really do anything at all (Ott). Because Norma and Arthur (as well

as the other couples) are given a choice between two things, they in a sense have two possible

paths of action. Therefore, they may have had the potential to do otherwise if they had in fact
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done the other action. However, the reason it is hard to believe that Norma uses free will to push

the button is because of the fact that other woman dies at the exact same time. The film tells us

that after pressing the button, the couple eventually gets a second set of choices, which is to

either kill the button-presser to preserve their child, or to live with the child’s newfound

impairment (1:36:00). The couple that is currently being presented with these second set of

options is making the choice to either kill the button-pusher or not. If they use their free will to

pick the option they like better, this does not seem to correlate to the following couple’s decision

to push the button or not. These two acts of free will are seemingly unrelated, so how could one

cause another? Additionally, if both acts of free will happened at the same time, it is not obvious

as to which specific action caused the other. If theoretically all four of the characters (both

couples) had free will, their actions could not simultaneously cause the others’ actions, because

each action would depend on an isolated choice.

By evaluating the philosophical implications within The Box more closely, one can see

that the protagonists, traditionally the drivers of the story’s action, are more powerless than

originally thought. The tragic ruing of the lives of Norma and Arthur cannot be fully attributed to

their own choices, but rather to the will of something they never have the chance to understand.

It is possible that every couple that is presented with the box becomes trapped in this fatal,

ongoing loop, in which there is never free will, because the previous couple’s action determines

the fate of the next. This concept leads to an even bigger unanswered question, which is the

questioning of the value in morality if one cannot even take charge of their own life.
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Works Cited

Kelly, Richard, director. The Box. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2009.

Ott, Walter. “The Meaning of Life.” Philosophy Dept., University of Virginia, Fall 2017,

Charlottesville, VA, Lecture.