Androids Don't Dream: They Plot - Essay Example

Dick was predicting our mental and emotional future, and in attempting to do so provided a fair and accurate assessment of life today. In Dick's book, the military industrial complex had led to near total destruction of life on earth. Those that were left were either mentally stunted or isolated in a dismal world. The androids in his book were not machines manufactured in a factory to serve humans. They were human beings that had been dehumanized by becoming part of an impersonal machine that they did not understand.

The disconnection with the world is indicated early on when J.R. Isadore meets the lady, later to become Pris Stratton and asks her name. "She gave him one last warmthless glance as she returned to her apartment, hesitated, and said, 'I'm Rachel Rosen.'" (67). Rachel had been burnt out by the constant barrage of corporate propaganda, mass media, and the necessity to mold to another's pattern. She remembered who she had been, but she was no longer that person. When she was no longer of use to the machine, she was cast aside like one more laid off worker from the capitalist system.

Dick's portrayal of the super secret world of shadow governments was his attempt to warn the world of their existence and indicate their plausibility. Deckard was working for a police force, yet did not have any knowledge of other forces working in the area. When Rick was taken to the police station after confronting Luba Luft, he found himself in a strange new world. When he inquired about his station on Lombard Street he was told, "That's the old Hall of Justice. The new one is on Mission. That old building, it's disintegrating: it's a ruin.

Nobody's used that for years" (110). Deckard had stumbled upon a shadow government, working in secret, replacing his own without his knowledge or consent. This is Dick's perception of the layers of secret police at work in his reality. The CIA, NSA, DEA, FBI, ATF, and a hundred other acronyms are working in the Mission Street station. Many of them are the 'androids', cogs on the capitalist military industrial complex that rules Dick's world.Dick was also astute in his perception that the Mission Street station was not in control of events.

As if to eerily predict the widespread bugging, wiretapping, and confiscation of citizens' conversations and personal records, he uses the Mission Street station as an example. "All our vidphone lines are trapped. They recirculate the calls to other offices within the building." (123). He let's the reader know that someone is watching and has not been unmasked. This is further reinforced when Resch comments after killing his superior, "There's evidently no bug installed here, monitoring everythingas there should be" (125).

By not revealing who would have been listening Dick shows us they exist, but searching for their identity is fruitless.This frightening search for truth and self identity continues throughout the book just as people seek it in this world of mass produced media and propaganda. Buster Friendly is the one source of information and the standard for truth as far as anyone knew. Buster is the 'Friendly' big media outlets that are loved by all as they seek some