Textual Analysis

Focusing primarily on Empathy, Real v's Fake and Relationships

A core theme running throughout ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ is the concept concerning relationships; starting with the protagonist Rick Deckard and his interhuman relationship with his wife Iran, and interandroid relationship with Rachael Rosen of Rosen Enterprises and not forgetting his mechanical pet sheep. He is the bounty hunter to the escaped Nexus-6 androids, who have fled from a portrayed utopia on Mars and have obtained human identities and rejected Issac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics (Seed, 2011). Rick’s job is to retire these ‘andys’ who pose a threat to the minority of humanity who remain on the dystopian planet Earth. It is a novel which explores the high interest of human emotions and what these emotions contribute to being a human being, in ‘Do Androids Dream ...’ it exposes the fragility and spectrum of human emotion and relation.

 “A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard” (pg.1) the Penfield mood organ is a piece of machinery that the characters can set to programme their mood. The heated discussion over the couples Penfield on Iran’s part “’If you dial’ Iran said, eyes open and watching, ‘for greater venom, then I’ll dial the same. I’ll dial maximum and you’ll see a fight that makes every argument we’ve had up to now seem like nothing’” (pg.2) here we witness the simulated and scheduled explosive relationship between Rick and his wife over her choice of mood setting a disagreement which Wheale claims is “the conflict between authentic and artificial personality”(Wheale, 1995, p.101). Iran continues, and explains “So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn’t feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realised how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting” (pg.3) this is Iran’s description of despair, feeling isolated on a planet where the majority of humanity has emigrated and left alone by an employed husband, Wheale highlights ‘Do Androids Dream ...’ success is down to the dominated personalities and relationships “because it explicitly plays with confusions between human personality and artificial or machine-derived intelligence” (Wheale, 1995, p.101-102). It is his wife’s explanation that makes Rick questions his own identity with those around him, his wife and his electric sheep.

Consequent to WWT, radiation poisoning either killed wildlife or made them an endangered species meaning that ownership of an organic animal carried a certain amount of prestige and elevated their social status, “Nothing could be more impolite. To say, ‘Is your sheep genuine?’” (p.5). Rick cares for his electronic sheep as if it were alive; however, this is not a mutual relationship and consciously he knows that this sheep will never return his affection like an organic animal could. Rick acknowledges that like in humanoid robots animal androids would be incapable of true emotion, with particular interest in empathy which is a leading trait in being human.

This acknowledged empathy leads us to question Rick’s overall character; initially other than taking care of an electric sheep we do not see that he possesses much empathy. His job description is to kill androids and during the course of his day from “A humanoid robot is like any other machine; it can fluctuate between being a benefit and a hazard very rapidly” (pg.32) to “He had never thought of it before, had never felt any empathy on his own part towards the androids he killed. Always he had assumed ... the android as a clever machine ... a difference had manifested itself ... Empathy towards an artificial construct? He asked himself. Something that only pretends to be alive?” (pg.112) here Rick changes his initial theory that androids have the inability to feel any empathy “most androids I’ve known have more vitality and desire to live than my wife”  (pg.75-76) this example is an indicator that his wife has more connections to reality and that humans do not necessarily have to feel empathy to be human, in regard to Phil Resch and his actions; it is just another one of Ricks theories.

Unlike Rick, John Isadore is the second protagonist who lives alone in an isolated part of town. Classified as a ‘chickenhead’ he is mentally damaged by the radioactive dust and yet he is the character that presents most empathy. For those characters who are alone like John there is an artificial empathy box that simulates an irreality to connect to other humans, “‘but an empathy box’ he said, stammering in his excitement, ‘is the most personal possession you have! It’s an extension of your body; it’s the way to touch other humans, it’s the way to stop being alone” (pg.53). The character of John we can relate into Survin’s theory of cognitive estrangement, because the character is distanced not through personal choice but through a social choice dependent on his mental deficiency. “I’ll fix dinner for both of us. And I’ll show her how so she can do it in the future if she wants. She’ll probably want to, once I show her how;” (pg.55) John can now examine his world from a new perspective because of this social alienation he wants to help Pris because he knows the feeling of social rejection.

Merrick illustrates that Philip K. Dick “exhibits [similar] preoccupations with the mechanization of subjectivity and psychological experiments” (Merrick in Bould et al, 2011, pg.105) in agreement within Recognizing a ‘human-Thing’: Cyborgs, Robots and Replicants Wheale states “Software engineers who are committed to the ‘strong’ version of belief in the capacity of Artificial Intelligence ... when human intelligence will be fully simulated by algorithmic, computational intelligence: computer programmes will think like people, and even surpass human reasoning” (Wheale, 1995, pg.102). This is what Rachael Rosen is, an android but with the outer physicality of female human “Rachael’s proportions ... were odd; with her heavy mass of dark hair her head seemed large, and because of her diminutive breasts her body assumed a lank, almost childlike stance. But her great eyes, with their elaborate lashes could only be those of a grown woman;” (pg.147) Rachael’s outward appearance proves her to be a woman when in fact she is a simulated replica which Wheale regards “placing such intelligence within a fleshy body creates a cyborg” (Wheale, 1995, pg.102). It is this outer shell “no excess flesh, a flat belly a small behind and a smaller bosom” (pg.147) which Rick is attracted to, he knows that Rachael is an android and still seduces her. He admits to his wife “I’ve begun to empathize with androids” (pg.137) but does not disclose the whole reasoning; this could signifies that Rick’s character is an instrument in Baudrillard’s depiction of a warped reality, Rachael Rosen is nothing more than a distorted truth.

It boils down to posthumanism and Galvan’s essay Enetring the Posthuman Collective in Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”  argues that Rick’s empathy and compassion are not due to the fact he follows Mercerism a cyber religion influenced by the teachings of Wilbur Mercer from an empathy box “[Isadore] He had crossed over in the usual perplexing fashion; physical merging – accompanied by mental and spiritual identification” (pg. 17) a connected hallucination between the colonised planets. Galvan’s essay also focuses on the government’s use of this technique as a form of mind control, to control mass cultures; she discusses Rick’s posthuman involvement “Rick could not have had this realization without the full benefit of his bounty-hunting experience, an experience that has taken him again and again into close proximity with the androids he has been assigned to kill. Only having had this contact can he feel compassion for the ostracised android, in ways that make him sensible that that creature compromises his selfish human ego” (Galvan, 1997). Here she sums up the basic conflict of the story a man set in his ways is replaced by a new ideology that could allow a coexistence with human and android and that this coexistence is an integral part of modern life. However, at the end of the novel we discover that Mercerism is an artificial construct “’I am a fraud,’ Mercer said. They’re sincere, their research is genuine ... All of it, their disclosure, is true” (pg.169) everything that Rick believed to be true once again is revealed as a distorted truth and leaves the audience questioning the overall power of reality and its social constructs, but internally to the novel whether or not androids could possess empathy?