Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep Analysis

The Fall of Mercerism and Possible Transcendence of Technology: How religion shapes reality for androids and humans
“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.” (p. 177). Philip K. Dick discusses the imprecise nature of good and evil in his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, as a method of separating his fictional androids from the human protagonists. This dichotomy emphasizes the role of empathy in creating the human identity. However, empathy is, merely a characteristic of the irrational and it is this innate irrationality of human beings, not just empathy, that truly separates them as alive. By struggling to come to terms with the violation of an identity, by blurring the lines between good and evil, humans in the novel segregate themselves from constructed beings. It is the flaw of rationality that keeps androids from experiencing life and, thus, gives Rick Deckard the obligation to retire them. This hazy contrast of good and evil, the real and the unreal, is epitomized in the conflict of existence between Mercerism and the Buster Friendly Show.
Throughout the novel, Buster uses “off-the-cuff jibes” and “guffaws” to mock Mercer and his followers as a means of destroying the empathy based religion. As Isidor says, the
By proving that the Mercer experience is contrived, the androids hope to fully disprove the existence of empathy. This is a rational belief, however, humans are irrational beings that share empathy as a means of perpetuating their society. That is why the classification as androids as equal to humans fails. Androids believe that, “…without the Mercer experience we just have [the human’s] word that you feel this empathy business.” (p.