Did anyone else catch the connections with The Odyssey? Bowman = The Bow that Odysseus is given in the Iliad and gets back at the end of The Odyssey!
Hal = The cyclops!
I know there are a few other things and I also know there are a million things I don’t know about it.

I also heard that it follows some of the philosophies of Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra”.

I think there are so many layers to this (the greatest film) and that Kubrick made it vague enough that we’ll never put it together, I don’t think there is one answer and I think Kubrick did this on purpose.