Do Android's Dream Of Electric Sheep Essay

What makes us Human? Phillip K. Dick’s Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep highlights the quality that makes one a human: empathy. Ever since science fiction first dawned, people have wondered if creatures from worlds beyond earth could have complex emotions like human beings’. With innovative scientific advances, people now conjecture if machines also might have feelings, however, Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep portrays how androids lack this specific trait of empathy, unlike their human counterparts. Humanity implying empathy is one of the core themes Dick achieved in his novel, and several times throughout his book he referenced this idea. Early on, Iran, the protagonist’s wife, said, “Those poor andy’s” (Dick 3). Iran actually empathizes with the androids and her empathetic nature shows that she is indeed a real human in the emotional sense. Later this idea of empathy was continued, but “empathy, evidently existed only within the human community” similar to when Isadore, a special, implored an android not to injure a spider because he cared for it (Dick 29, 190). Iran’s husband, Rick, also had empathy. Before he retired an android, he bought her a painting, and this act of random kindness made her say, “there’s something very strange and touching about humans” (Dick 124). That strange and touching thing is empathy. Even though Dick established the humans as having empathy the androids were very much lacking this basic human trait, and this absence of empathy kept them from ever being truly “human.” When Rick bought the painting for the android before he retired her, she told him, “an android would never have done that” (Dick 124). An android would never have imagined buying another android a gift because they do not have feelings. This numb nature of androids continued when Pris saw a spider and shouted, “Why couldn’t it get by on four [legs]? Cut off four and see” (Dick 189). Pris mutilated a poor helpless creature, and she could