The Sacred World of Imagination: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick - Essay Example

The Sacred World of Imagination In Philip K. Dicks book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the paints a scientifically fictitious future of mankind. This future is an alternate future that lies ahead for man. It is a future where the destruction of society has left man swimming in a sea of illusion and mistrust. Man has the power to create and has the power to destroy. In using these vast powers he has restructured the religion of mankind and has placed himself in the position of a God and created new idols. Man has turned to animals as his new religion. He worships them, yet buys and sells them as a way to gain the status granted by morality. The artificial animals are meaningless and superficial trappings. He worships any truly living animal as sacred. Still, in his quest for spiritual guidance, he is also forced to turn to the fraud and trickery of Mercerism. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a book that parodies mans superficial quest for religion through the fraud of animal worship and shows how man will even turn to inanimate objects for moral guidance. The story is told through the world of Rick Deckard. He is a bounty hunter who hunts down and kills the illegal Androids. The Rosen Corporation has built the new Nexus-6 robots so lifelike that they are almost undetectable. In a world where there is little that resembles life in the past, Deckard must seek out and destroy that which has the potential to replace it. The world has become splintered and alienated. People exist on the margins of life, outcast and distanced from any reality. Humans are segregated by health and kept at a distance from truth by the propaganda of the Android Buster Friendlys non-stop television show and the fraudulent religion of Mercerism. Having destroyed nearly all of the original creation, man must now decide which of his own replacements are good and which are evil. The story of morality is told through the animal kingdom. Animals are the one constant that everyone has a connection to. They are highly valued as the last symbol of refinement and civilization. In Dick’s vision of the future, animals are the only remnant of God’s original creation that man still clings to. He places real animals on a spiritual pedestal and has made them a valuable commodity. The Sidney’s Catalogue has become the new bible, carried wherever they go and looked to for truth and guidance. When an animal that appears to be real confuses Rick he states his belief in Sidney’s. He says, “Sidney’s never makes a mistake. We know that too. What else can we depend on?” (p.41). The bounty hunter that was trying to eliminate the false humans from earth was also dedicated to finding the only true animals left on the planet. Syndey’s had become his bible. Virtue was evaluated by mans treatment and care of the animals he owned and knew. When Deckard was trying to purchase a horse from his neighbor, his neighbor rebuffed his request. Barbour, the neighbor said, "It would be immoral to sell my horse" (p.10). Deckard replied, "Sell the colt, then. Having two animals is more immoral than not having any" (p.10). Deckard and his neighbor were in a tug of war over the contention that there was a proper and moral responsibility to owning an animal. It did not involve the treatment of the animal, only the ownership. Ownership of one animal was righteous, more was gluttonous, and less was depraved. In Dicks book, animals were elevated to the elite level of ethics and Godliness. To know an appreciation for an animal was to make you a better human being. When John Isadore was returning to the pet repair shop to have what he believed was a robotic cat recharged, the cat expired. He was glad that it had died and now he "...no longer had to listen to the nerve wracking wheezing of the construct: he could relax" (p.72). Animals, and especially robotic ones, did not move Isadore. The war had left Isadore mentally challenged and he had been, "...reduced to this ignomous task with its attendant emotional by-products" (p.72). His mind had been reduced and with it the morality of the love for animals. He muses, "Maybe when you deteriorate back down the ladder of evolution as I have, when you sink into the tomb of slough of being a special..." (p.72). Its here that Dick contends that we lose our morality, the love of animals, and the preciousness of life. The elitism of the religion of animals had been not been lost on John Isadore, but had been trivialized. The androids were even more devoid of human emotion and moral qualities than John Isadore. Their reactions to animals were likewise more debase. Pris, an android, commented to Isadore, "Were all schizophrenic, with defective emotional lives.." (p.161). IQ was not called into question, but emotion. Isadore couldnt imagine the government wanting to kill the defective androids. He states, "Even animals-even eels and gophers and snakes and spiders - are sacred" (p.161). Though he could not feel the emotional attachment to the religion of the animals, he knew it to be true. One of the other androids spoke up, "Insects, are especially sacrosanct" (p.161). Everyone knew the morality contained within the animal worship, but only the mentally elite were allowed to express it. The quest for proving ones morality through the worship of animals was also a prison that held man captive. For Deckard, his fake sheep was as close as he could get to a true object of worship. It was a symbol to the rest of the world that he was pure. It was like dressing up on Sunday just to be seen in church. Yet, it was a chore for him. He thought, "... hatred once more manifested itself toward his electric sheep, which he had to tend, had to care about, as if it lived. The tyranny of an object, he thought" (p42). Deckard had become a slave to his own morality, not for moralitys sake, but for the purpose of appearing righteous. In Dicks book, animals are bought and sold like the religion of Dicks creation. Dick was saying that we could have morality if we were special enough to afford it. When a salesman was showing Deckard a goat, the salesman says, "A goat is loyal. And it has a free natural soul which no cage can chain up" (p168). Yet, this spiritualism led to an exchange of bartering. "Will this be a cash deal?" "All cash." "Its a deal." The salesman and Deckard had come to a financial agreement on the value of a soul. Even the farthest stretches of what might be worshipped were heaped with praise. Deckard had come across an electric toad that would eat electric flies and artificial bugs. Yet, it had become the center of his moral compass. His wife called about getting it tuned up and adjusted. She tells the repair shop, "I want it to work perfectly. My husband is devoted to it" (p.244). It was not that he liked it or cared for it. He was devoted to it just as people are devoted to their faith. The fact that it was phony and insignificant made no difference. For Deckard it was his sign to the world that he had morality. Morality, religion, and animals can be bought and sold to the highest bidder. They are a sign of the elitist attitude that shows mans righteousness to the rest of the world. It is not the ethical value of the actions that has any meaning, it is mans attendant meaning he puts on the meaningless objects. Dicks book illustrates that worship is in the mind of man. It could be Christ, Allah, or an electric toad. Man will be devoted and will swear to its spiritual value. He will buy it and sell it. He will love it and loathe it. He will seek it out in an effort to prove to himself and others that there is one special thing that separates him from the rest of the universe. His imagination. References Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. Read More