Phillip K. Dick: Novel Analysis

The second half of the XX century and the beginning of the XXI century brought us many groundbreaking inventions without which we cannot imagine to live nowadays. Television, mobile phones, computers with widely available access to the internet and electronic implants used as a replacement for faulty human organs are only some of those great technological changes that were introduced to us quite recently as big and positive improvements of our lives. Still, some of the authors living during the times of this rapid appearance of those enormous wonders of humanity began to see all the changes to the world and society that those “wonders” caused, a little less optimistically and enthusiastically than the most people in the world. This is how the

In his novel Phillip K. Dick actually raises an important issue which is namely the question: what the humanity actually is? The major thing that decides about one's humanity is the sense of empathy. Each character from the book has to go through the process of realizing what it actually means to be empathetic and whether it automatically classifies someone as a living thing. Through the course of the book, the main character, Rick Deckard, discovers that some of the androids may be capable of empathy that some of the humans lack. “This is demonstrated through the character of Phil Resch who, Rick finds, enjoys killing simply for killing's sake.“ (Davis). Another important cultural aspects that are present in the novel are the concept of mind control and the sense of reality. “The reality of the enormous, cluttered, post-industrial city is, according to critics, a study of the blurring of the line between what's human and what's mechanical. The events that really happened and the ones that are just illusion created by memory implants.” (Oramus, 156). Replicants often have a sense that they are humans and provide proofs “from the past” that were fabricated by the government. The concept of mind control is present both in the brainwashing of the people by the government and also in the fact that people living on earth use the Penfield Mood Organ on which they can acquire “The desire to watch TV, no matter what's on” (Dick, 9) or “Long deserved peace” (182). This brings to the conclusion that people who use those machines to set their mood, are not really that different from the androids that they view as non-human. In the city we are also able to see the representatives of various races, speaking many different languages. The state of entropy and chaos is present at every corner of the city. “Android defined by it's lack of