“Are you an android, Mr. Deckard?” (114)
This simple, direct question has the potential to throw a crutch in Rick Deckard’s reality, possibly indicating that he is in fact not a human, but one of the androids he seeks to destroy. This kind of paradigm shift would be fatal to Rick and to his reality and as Jill Galavan points out in her essay, if Rick were in fact an android it would show that androids and humans have been incorporated into the same world almost indistinguishably (Galavan, 418). This question may be simple and extremely easy for Rick to answer, but it makes him stop and think and begins to bring his life into question as he is no longer sure if he is even human, a fact most of us take for granted. It is quotes such as these that make me wonder how the androids themselves do not know that they are androids. I realize that their memories are altered, but it begs the question, how do they really not know? Do the androids bleed like humans? What does this say about humanity, about the distinction of empathy that I previously wrote about? As Jill Galavan says, questions such as these bring into question the entirety of human reality. (Galavan, 418)
This quote also threw an entire new spin into the novel and made me want to continue in order to find out whether or not Rick really is a robot. I think that this is so fascinating to me because I, like most other people, cannot fathom my whole reality being destroyed so suddenly and by a simple question, especially so far as to not know whether or not I am alive.
*Excerpts from Galavan, Jill. (1997) “Entering the posthuman Collective in Phillip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?””. Science Fiction Studies. Vol. 24 num 3 pgs. 413-429.
I really liked how you chose a simple question for your close reading instead of a big wordy passage. It really helped demonstrate the magnitude of the considerations that this questions brings to light, and how what seems like a simple yes or no question can have multifaceted meanings. I was also fascinated by that far the some androids did not know they were androids. Does that make them more human if they honestly believe they are humans? That is debatable.
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