“A Stone is Nobody’s” Russell Edson Prompt 3. Pay attention to the way the lines are constructed in the poem. How does the use of enjambment, line length, end-stops, caesuras, meter or syllabics, and/or rhyme work to enhance or enact meaning in the poem? The poem “A Stone is Nobody’s” is a clear example of […]
Narrative Technique in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Though not nearly of complex a read as As I Lay Dying by Faulkner, Phillip K. Dick does try to create a little bit of his own version of stream-of-conciousness narration in a more relaxed way. This story is told in third person narration (limited omniscient) about the two main characters the reader is following around for the […]
Ex Machina is Real and She’s Here.
When reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I was struck by how closely the themes reminded me of 1) the movie Ex Machine and 2) Sophia the new AI bot. Overall, Do Androids explores the question “what makes us human?” While there is no definite answer in the book, it seems that the concept of emotions play […]
Hundred Hours of Peace
It had been almost a full year on Mars before I realized there must be something else. I had not questioned the work – I had not questioned my purpose. But – then I did. One day I had been lifting an item for my superior being, and I asked, “Do you need me […]
What is real?: Philip Dick and life in 1968
1968 was far cry from Philip K. Dick’s, Do Androids Dreams of Electric Sheep? Yet, Dick’s futuristic environment in the novel was being influenced by the world around him. In 1968, when Dick’s novel was published, movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barbarella, and Planet of the Apes were coming out. Television shows like Star Trek, […]
The Definition of Alive
“The electric things have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are.” (191) As a science-fiction novel, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? tackles the battle of what constitutes life through the allegories and social-indicators of androids, the humans and “specials” remaining on Earth, and the weight of an electric animal versus a real […]
Animals and the Empathy Paradox (Bonus Post)
One of the first things that struck me was the importance of animals within the novel. In the first chapter, as Rick reveals his sheep is in fact a fraud, he explains,”You know how people are about not taking care of an animal; they consider it immoral and anti-empathic. I mean, technically it’s not a […]
The Lorax and the Androids
This is a bit of a stretch, but while reading the first few chapters of this novel, all I could think about was the movie, The Lorax. The book The Lorax does not go into as much detail as the movie adaptation, and the movie adds a lot more to the plot since it is […]
Does Wilbur Mercer Dream of Empathy?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction novel published in 1968 by Philip K. Dick. It’s the story of a man named Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who lives in a dystopian San Francisco after most of the human population has relocated themselves to Mars due to the extensive damages to Earth […]
Resentment at being told what to think and do from Ellison’s Brotherhood to the current Democratic party
Ralph Ellison deals with the divide in the black community that isn’t often talked about. The notion that one group speaks for the whole race and they rest of the community is told what to think and do by said group. They become pawns of the group that views themselves as the only true voice […]