Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Do Androids ambitiousness of Electric Sheep - Essay ExampleWhat it is to be humanity is a recurring dilemma that the characters in Do Androids Dream? try to make sense of and through their actions and the plot itself, the author and readers also navigate this problem. reply to the world around them, specifically the display of empathy, is seemingly the most definitive marker of the humanness of human cosmoss. However, one finds that by the end of Do Androids Dream?, this assumption has been turned around on its head and back again m whatsoever times over. Rather than provide an easy template of humanity for us to accept, Dick uses this novel to instead ask the right questions. The most obvious and repeated assumption is that empathy is what differentiates humans from andies i.e. androids or humanoid robots that have been created in the post-apocalyptic condition of the novel to help in the process of emigration of humans to Mars. This is reflected in the popular religion Mercer ism, the foundation of which lies on an empathetic worldview and the acceptance of collective experience. purge humans who are relegated to the fringes of society because of their low IQ chickenheads or antheads also accept this view of the world. ... Isidores need for companionship runs so deep that yet though he recognizes that the renegade andies are exploiting him when they take cover in his apartment he lets them stay and even tries to protect them from the bounty-hunter. The androids themselves recognize this quality as that elusive human quality that they cannot achieve. Roy Baty, the leader of the rebel androids, despite his scornful demeanor reveals his longing to experience this at several times, exulting ultimately when Mercerism is stated a fraudulent belief system. Empathy- interrogatorying is also the most practical way of detecting androids and retiring or killing them before they can pose any harm to the humans remaining on Earth. As later revealed by Deckards ri val bounty-hunter Philip Resche, tests other than the Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test, are not nearly as thriving in identifying androids. This then is the dominant narrative Humans empathize, androids do not. However, this statement is not as uncomplicated as it may seem. Firstly, there is the question of being able to duplicate this kind of empathy. As the testing of Rachael Rosen in the first instance proves, even Deckard, for a while, is unable to recognize Rachael as an android when he is fed the story about her having been raised on another planet and therefore being not too adept at empathizing with other humans. reflect manipulation of the empathy test can also be done by prevaricating, like in Luba Lufts case. Luft, who is an android, deliberately refuses to answer questions directly to prevent the test from giving accurate results. Secondly, there is also the question of inherent anomalies in this testing system. As Deckards boss, Bryant, warns him at the start of his quest fo r the six