Foil

Character Role Analysis

Dallas and Ripley

If you wanted to make a complicated enough diagram, you could probably show that every character in Alien is a foil for another. A more complex Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard, if you will. But the most important foils are Dallas and Ripley, because they each give us a different model of courage in the face of danger.

Dallas may be the captain of the Nostromo, but he just isn't as good of a leader as Ripley. Ripley makes the clearheaded decision to keep Kane off the ship once he's contacted the unknown organism, while Dallas orders her to let him inside. Ripley's decision may seem hardhearted, but it's the one that puts fewer people at risk.

In addition, Dallas is a company man, letting the company protocol make the tough decisions for him so that he doesn't have to. We see this when he reverts responsibility for the alien he brought aboard to Ash, the science officer. Ripley makes her decisions herself, even deciding to self-destruct the ship, the Company's property, to kill the alien. Her reward is survival.