Book Review: '2001: A Space Odyssey' - Chapters 2 and 3: "The New Rock," "Academy"

You all knew this was coming. Source

I have decided to review two chapters at a time of 2001: A Space Odyssey, because upon skimming through the book, I realize that the chapters are each only a few pages long and I do not want to end up having 20-plus posts on the same book when I could just condense them into chunks.

 Chapter 2: "The New Rock"

Moon-Watcher wakes up later in the night. He sits up in the cave and overhears what he thinks are big cats just outside. During the commotion, he hears the sound of metal hitting stone, a sound which has never been heard before on Earth.

The next morning, Moon-Watcher and his tribe go to the river and catch a glimpse of a monolith. He thinks for a while and concludes that the slab is a rock that shot up out of the ground overnight. He tries biting and licking the monolith, but to no avail. 

After foraging for food miles from home and one of their females newly dead, the man-apes head back to the caves when they hear a strange sound coming from the monolith. They begin to move toward the pulsating noise as though they are in a trance. Once night falls, the monolith begins to glow. The lights begin rotating faster and faster, merging into various shapes as the man-apes stare in awe. The whole time they are watching the monolith, it is reading their minds and studying their reactions.

The man-ape nearest to the monolith is freed from his trance and attempts to tie a knot with a stalk of grass, still being manipulated by the slab. After crushing the grass stalk, he becomes frozen again. Another younger man-ape becomes unfrozen and does the same task as the last one, succeeding this time. Soon, one by one, the others are made to do similar tasks with their hands and bodies.

Moon-Watcher becomes unfrozen and is made to pick up a rock and throw it at a target on the surface of the monolith. 

After everyone had been possessed, the monolith begins to glow. The man-apes are awoken from their trance and head back to their cave.

Chapter 3: "Academy"

The next morning, the man-apes go out to forage. They pass by the monolith, having no recollection of what had happened the night before.

That night, as the tribe head back to the cave, the monolith glows and makes noise like before, but this time it is only experimenting on a few of the man-apes. Moon-Watcher, one of the chosen, begins to have visions of a man-ape family with clothes on and full stomachs. The vision soon fades, and Moon-Watcher leads his tribe home. As he sits near the entrance of the cave, he begins to feel a new feeling, that of discontentment with his life. The same visions appear to Moon-Watcher and the other few man-apes for a few more days.

One day Moon-Watcher sees some warthogs pass by, and he begins looking for an object on the ground. He finds a pointy stone and a young warthog and kills the beast with the rock. The other man-apes surround the poor creature and begin hitting it with the rock until the corpse is unrecognizable. The man-apes have now learned how to use tools and hunt.