Philosophical analysis of the movie Snowpiercer and its protagonist – Curtis Everett

Introduction:

Revolving around the premise of happenings of the movie, it is 2031, seventeen years after
authorities in seventy-nine countries decided to collectively to combat global warming with the
coolant CW-7. The result was the Earth being immediately sent into a deep freeze, killing all
human life except a handful who now live on an "ark", a revolutionary train built before 2014 by
a train aficionado named Wilford, the train which at that time was considered futile and self-
indulgent. The train is required to be constantly moving to generate energy for life inside, it
which circumnavigates the globe on a single continuous track once every year. The train is still
controlled in all of its aspects by Wilford, who has created three separate classes housed in
different parts of the train: the privileged "one percent", who are at the front of the train, the
workers who support both ends occupy the middle of the train, and the "tail people", the masses
who live at the back of the train. The tail people who live like cattle in a windowless car, in the
movie, are made to resemble beggars with ragged clothes and worn out faces. They are solely fed
protein bars, whose ingredients the tail people are not aware of. The face of Wilford's ideology to
those in the tail end is Minister Mason, as Wilford never ventures to the tail end of the train.
Some of the policies which Wilford implemented in the movie are of him taking many of the
children from the tail end in order to get them to manually work a part of the engine and
committing occasional indiscriminate genocide in the tail end in order to keep the balance in the
train as he cannot have too many people to feed in his inbuilt ecological system. It was his
method of population control, and to demonstrate his dictatorial power in an effort to have a
complacent populace amongst the masses. There have been many attempts of revolution by the
tail people in the past, all quashed by Wilford. Curtis, one of the tail people and protagonist of
the film, wants to attempt another revolution, he believing all past attempts having failed because
they have focused on Wilford, as opposed to what he feels needs to occur for power: take control
of the engine at the front. Supporting Curtis in this fight are, amongst others: Gilliam, the wise
old man; Edgar, who Curtis took under his wing when he became orphaned in the early years;
and Tanya and Andrew, who want to find their children that were taken away from them. Along
the way, they have to cooperate Namgoong Minsoo, an addict of a synthetic hallucinogen called
Kronole, the security system designer and engineer of all the train cars. He was the only one that
could help them get to the engine room. He decided to help them on the condition that his
daughter, Yona, joins them too. As Curtis and his team try to work their way from car to car
from the tail to the front, their priorities are influenced by what they see and what they learn.

Curtis was not always the hero as portrayed in the first half of the film. Initially, when Wilford
crammed about thousand people in the tail end of the train car with no food or water, it all boiled
down to the survival of the fittest. This aspect of the movie can be seen as a parallel to Darwin’s
theory of Evolution, wherein, he states that only the most adaptable will survive in a particularly
hard and hostile environment. This can be referenced to Justice Foster’s argument in the
Speluncean Explorers case. Since they were away from what can be known as a conventional,
civilized society, they are not entitled to follow any rules under the jurisdiction of a social
contract theory, in their case, that did not exist in the first place. Wilford’s rule over the people of
the train, in fact, encouraged the elimination of people by any way possible as he always strived
to maintain a balance in the ecological system of the train, that is, 77% as mentioned in the
movie, at all times. According to the formulation of Wilford’s very own social contract theory,
natural selection was a right way to fend for oneself. It was a win-win situation for him. Curtis,
initially, was a slave to his humanistic survival instincts. According to Hobbes, man in the state
of war lived in war with his fellows, that is, humans are a slave to natural inclinations of
mankind. He killed and ate people and a baby. When he was about to kill another baby in order
to satisfy his hunger, Gilliam cut his arm off and offered it to Curtis. Curtis was touched by the
actions of the old man in order to save the baby’s life. Since that incident, he stopped being
influenced by Social Darwinism (natural selection of humans) and his life and ideals inherently
changed for the better. Ever since that eye opening incident, he was determined to break the
prevalent social class system that was prevalent in the train. This system can be seen in parallel
to Plato’s commonwealth system, wherein, it stated that people who stick to their stations of
work in a well-oiled hierarchal system, guarantee the smooth running of a society or in this case,
the engine of the train. Curtis, as one of the tail people, wanted to get to the engine room in order
to change the way things functioned and worked in the train. He wanted to take control of the
engine of the train in order to overthrow Wilford and his dictatorial regime over the people in the
train. He wanted to establish a classless society in order to alleviate everyone’s pain and put an
end to all the suffering of the economically weaker sections. His philosophy shifts to a John
Rawl’s philosophy that aimed at viewing society with a “veil of ignorance” that treated everyone
equally despite their economical or social status. Curtis was tired of watching his people being
treated as the “lesser than” part of the train. A lot of instances in the movie will make a person
doubt his true intentions but at the very end of the movie, when Curtis learns of the need of
ecological balance of the train or the need for people to die in order for the continuance of
existence of the people on the train, he realizes that bringing about social equality will only lead
to their deaths. In this pivotal moment, he realizes that destroying the very system that enslaves
them rather than changing it is the only solution. He then, with the help of his comrades, blows
up the train. He would rather die or believe that there might be life outside the train than let
himself and his people be subjected to that brutality. He gets offered to be the one who controls
the engine by Wilford, but he does not get enticed by it. He shattered the system in order to
provide for a new and just beginning.