"Irans attention is never
properly directed towards Rick, as one might believe with them
being married and all. Rather she exists in her own little world, a world
consisting of her compassion for Wilbur Mercer, the Penfield organ and
first the sheep, then the goat and lastly the toad. Her compassion,
representative for the rest of humanity, towards the animals seems to be
rather fleeting. Although she seems at first crushed over the loss of the goat,
her attention immediately moves onto the toad as soon as Rick walks in the
door with it. And here it’s worth noting that the toad is synthetic,
contrary to the real goat” Heilemann 6).
To some degree, I agree with
Michael's assessment of Iran's behavior, but I find his overall interpretation
to be rather limited. While Iran definitely exists within a rather alienated
world, I think she, like Rick Deckard, is trying to escape this world of
simulation in the pursuit of reality. That is, a more tangible, hopefully
comprehensive reality. The reality of World War Terminus is a confusing mixture
of synthetic, organic, and mechanic.
Iran’s unhappiness with her “own
little world” can be seen in the first chapter and first scene of Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep (Heilemann 6). The scene begins with a discussion between
her and Rick, and their usage of the Penfield mood organ. While Rick seems
extremely comfortable with letting the mood organ dictate his emotions and keep
him in a more serene place of self-fulfillment, Iran seems to fight against the
mood organ as a method of happiness or good will. She outlines her unhappiness
with the organ and her (almost rebellious) decision to program a twice-monthly
mood of despair and depression.
"I don't feel like dialing
anything at all now," Iran said.
"Then dial 3," he said.
"I can't dial a setting that
stimulates my cerebral cortex into wanting to dial! If I don't want to dial, I
don't want to dial that most of all, because then I will want to dial, and
wanting to dial is right now the most alien drive I can imagine; I just want to
sit here on the bed and stare at the floor" (Dick 3).
It is only after Rick’s incessant
pestering that she invoke the powers of the mood organ, that she finally gives
in and allows him to administer dial 594 “pleased acknowledgment of husband's
superior wisdom in all matters” (Dick 3).
By the way, it is incredibly
creepy to me that 594 is a dial on the mood organ, dial 888 is also a bit
disconcerting (“the desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it”), but I find
that a bit more funny than unsettling.
This first scene also refutes
Heilemann’s claim of Iran’s diminutive empathy with her resentment towards Rick
and his profession. Although it can be argued that she is simply badgering and
goading him to start a fight, she seems to at least have some empathy towards
the androids her husband professionally retires.
"You're worse," his wife
said, her eyes still shut. "You're a murderer hired by the cops. "I've never killed a human being in my
life." His irritability had risen, now; had become outright
hostility. Iran said, "Just those
poor andys."
I also don’t agree with
Heilemann’s evaluation of Iran’s compassion as “fleeting” (6). This may be the
case, but I do not think he reinforced this idea with adequate proof or
argument. While he notes that the toad is synthetic, contrary to the real goat,” he forgets to
mention that the sheep was also synthetic. It is unknown whether she really did
mourn the sheep when it first died, or what connection she really had to it,
since it is implied that Rick was the primary caretaker. Perhaps she did not
have a strong connection to the sheep because of this. Also since they have had
the electric sheep for about a year, perhaps she did grieve for sometime after
the sheep died. They only possessed the goat for a couple of hours before
Rachel dispatched it to the great Mercer in the sky, so it would have been hard
for her to actually establish a lasting emotional connection towards the
animal. So his statement regarding her “fleeting” empathy towards the animals,
as a “lack of emotion” is erroneous without proper evidence that this is an
inability that connotes cold behavior (Heilemann 6).
Works Cited
Dick, Phillip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Ballantine, 1996. Print.
Heilemann, Michael. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner" Print.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with your criticism of Heilemann's essay. I like how you brought up Rick's and Iran's pursuit of reality. What is real versus what is fake is an important conflict that persists throughout this novel. This is a conflict that really cannot be settled. The problem exists within our own logic. Logic is something that we would like to think will always lead us to the “right” answer. This is fine if one does not consider the numerous paradoxes that exist within our logic that prove that it is flawed. An example of this is the famous Liar’s Paradox: “This sentence is false.” This flawed logic allows us to categorize things based on their characteristics. The problem we now encounter is how we label something as real versus fake. Can we truly say that anything we have ever encountered in our live is actually fake? At the same point can we label everything besides what we think of as real as fake? Perhaps everything that we have ever experienced in our lives is actually fake. Reality is such a subjective term that it is exceptionally hard to define. I would say the pursuit of reality is a rather fruitless task.
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