Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Book Talk

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick

Description

• Dystopian future fiction. Year 2021 after World War Terminus, Most people have evacuated the dying planet to Mars where they are given androids as incentive to live there. Those who stayed on Earth are the poor, the ones too affected by nuclear fallout, and the ones whose jobs make them stay. Rick Deckard’s job is to hunt down androids that have escaped from Mars and “retire” them.
• Owning a real live animal is a status symbol, and some people own realistic-looking electric animals to keep up the façade
• Penfield mood organs: the mood organ can induce any desired mood in the people nearby, such as "an optimistic business-like attitude" or "the desire to watch television, no matter what is on."
• Religion: Mercerism makes a cultural push for greater empathy as a technology-based religion. Mercerism uses "empathy boxes" to link all users together to a virtual reality of community suffering, centered on a Christ-like victim, Wilbur Mercer, who eternally climbs up a hill while being hit with stones.
• Empathy Test (Voigt-Kampff Test) A toll used by Rick Deckard for identifying androids posing as humans since androids lack the ability to feel empathy.
• Two perspectives throughout the story: Rick Deckard (hard, straight-forward, hates androids) and J. R. Isidore ("special," simple-minded, oblivious)

·       Plot Summary:

Bounty hunter Rick Deckard signs on to a new police mission to earn enough money to buy a live animal to replace his electric sheep for himself and his depressed wife, Iran. The mission involves "retiring" a group of six Nexus-6 androids that went rogue and fled from Mars to Earth after their creation. Deckard visits Rosen headquarters in Seattle to confirm the validity of his question-and-answer empathy test. Deckard is greeted by Rachael Rosen, who quickly fails his test. She was built to try and discredit his test, but she does not fool him.

Deckard soon meets a Soviet police contact, who turns out to be one of the disguised Nexus-6. Deckard retires the android, then flies off to retire his next target: Luba Luft, an opera-singing Nexus-6. This android, however, has him arrested by a police officer he has never met and taken to a police department he has never known. An official named Garland accuses Deckard himself of being an android. After a series of increasingly mysterious revelations at the police station, Deckard for the first time ponders the questions his line of work raises regarding android intelligence, empathy, and what it really means to be human. Phil Resch, the station's bounty hunter, finally gets testing equipment to determine if his coworkers as well as Deckard are androids or humans. Garland reveals that the entire station is a sham, completely staffed by androids, including Garland himself. Resch shoots Garland in the head and escapes with Deckard and they travel together to find and arrest the android opera singer, which Resch retires in cold blood. Deckard takes the empathy test for himself and for Resch, which confirms that Resch is just a particularly ruthless human being, and that Deckard is also human, but with empathy for androids.

Half of the story is told through the events that happen with John R. Isidore, a radioactively-damaged, intellectually slow human classified as a "special." One of the 3 remaining Nexus-6 android fugitives, Pris Stratton, moves in to an apartment building where Isidore lives and he tries to befriend her. Roy and Irmgard Baty, the final two rogue androids, visit the building, and they all together plan how to survive.

Meanwhile, Deckard with his reward money buys Iran an authentic goat. After quitting work, Deckard is pulled back in after being notified of a new lead and experiencing a vision of the prophet-like Mercer confusingly telling him to proceed though his mission is immoral. Deckard calls back upon Rachael Rosen, since her own insider knowledge as an android will aid his investigation. Rachael reveals that she and Pris are the same exact model, meaning that he will have to shoot down an android that looks just like her. Rachael coaxes Deckard to have sex, after which they mutually confess their love, but she reveals she has slept with multiple other bounty hunters in order to convince them to stop their missions. After threatening to kill her, Deckard deserts her.

Isidore develops friendships with the three android fugitives, and they all watch a television program giving definitive evidence that Mercerism is not real. Roy Baty tells Isidore that the show was produced by androids to discredit Mercerism and blur the distinction with humans. Suddenly Deckard enters the building, with supernatural warning visions of Mercer appearing to both him and Isidore. Deckard becomes legally justified in shooting down all three androids without testing them, since they attack him first, and he successfully does so. When Deckard returns home, he finds Iran grieving because Rachael Rosen recently showed up and murdered their goat.

Deckard goes to an uninhabited, obliterated region of Oregon to reflect. He climbs a hill when he is hit by falling rocks and realizes this is an experience similar to Mercer's. Rushing back to his car, he stumbles abruptly upon a toad, an animal previously thought to be extinct, and one of the animals sacred to Mercer himself. With newfound joy, Deckard brings the toad home, where Iran quickly discovers that it is just a robot. While Deckard is unhappy, he decides that he at least prefers to know the truth: whether the toad is real or artificial, remarking with an exhausted reflection upon the events that have taken place that "The electrical things have their lives too, paltry as those lives are".

Rationale

·       Most students need to do a dystopian unit, and this book an entertaining and challenging read that brings up a lot of important questions to debate and discuss. The class should be taught at a junior or senior level to be able to discuss the deeper meaning of the book and make sure the students can comprehend the more difficult parts of the text. The book touches on what it means to be human, equality, the importance of religion, following the norms of society, life and death, emotions, and the age old question of “should AI be treated like humans.”

Teaching Methods

·       Discussion: Plenty of things that will need to be talked about throughout the book as the students read it and could lead to some very good discussion like the use of the mood organs, religion, the importance of fitting into society, what it means to be human, the deterioration of the world, etc.

·       Debate: There are also plenty of topics in this book that are worth having a class debate over. The main one being “should AI be treated like humans?” This could be expanded for this story to include the “special” people as well.

·       It would also be a fun activity to have the students take a test to see if they are human or not, for fun, and talk about their results. Or make a game where some students are androids and other students have to ask a series of questions to see if they can figure out which students are androids or not.

·       Listen to the audiobook: Gives a real feel and atmosphere to the book and helps understand the story a bit more. Listening to the audiobook can help break up the story for the students so they don't get overwhelmed with reading the entire thing.

·       Watch the movie: Bladerunner is critically acclaimed but notorious for being very different from the book. I think it would be a good lesson at the end of the unit to watch the movie and compare and contrast the book and movie and discuss why those changes were made and ask them what they would have done differently.

Obstacles

• Mild language

·       Complex concepts: mainly Mercerism and the empathy box

·       Sex scene between man and robot: Isn’t explicit but sex is discussed a few times in the book and will need to be talked about.

·       Religion: The book focuses heavily on the religion of Mercerism and how people feel about it. At the end of the book it is proved to not be real, but people still worship it anyway. Religion is always a hard topic to teach.

·       Mild violence: the only people who die are androids, but they are very lifelike so some of the details are a little excessive

·       The ending is a bit anti-climactic and weird: build up to the final showdown that turns out to not be as exciting. There is a supernatural element that comes into play that is a bit out of nowhere. And then just kind of ends.

·       Could be considered a classic at this point (written in 1968) and should be easy to get administration to approve it, but may have difficulty with parents with the religious aspects