In chapter one I found a very interesting part of the reading to be when Rick began to talk to his neighbor regarding his electric sheep. At the end of the conversation to try and convince Barbour to allow him to buy his foal Rick showed him that his sheep was not real. Barbour assured him he would not tell anyone, which in turn caused “something of the despair that Iran had been talking about tapped him on the shoulder…” (Dick 13). Rick then became aggravated and tells Barbour if he could get enough andys (androids) in one month he could buy an animal. Barbour makes a joke about Rick buying a domestic animal instead or a cricket, which sends Rick into a silent rage. Rick, being aggravated at the statement, tells Barbour how his horse could die and he could find her lying on her back like a cricket. This part of the reading really stood out to me because of all of the different emotions Rick went through. In the beginning of the chapter he and his wife Iran spoke of how they had to program their emotions of the day, kind of like a robot. Yet when Barbour told Rick he would not tell anyone of the sheep, Rick felt despair without having to program it into his system; he also seemed to have felt anger without having to program it into his system. My question is, so far in the reading what do you think Dick is trying to make us believe that Iran and Rick are? Are they human; are they androids; are they somehow a mixture of both?
2 thoughts on “Provocation”
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I think that both Rick and Iran might be a mixture of both android and human. In the first chapter Iran mentions something about not wanting to program her cerebral cortex to want to dial something. By Using the distinct word cerebral cortex it made me think that they are indeed human however, they have found a way to shut off all human emotion and are able to now program what, when and how they feel. I also questioned wether they were human or android when Rick described how he felt different emotions even before he dialed in the emotions he wanted. I feel as though Philip K. Dick wants us to question what humanity actually means and will leave us guessing if the main characters are indeed human.
During chapter 1, I had a hard time depicting whether Iran and Rick were humans, robots, or a combination. When I first got the book, I read the description on the back, and believed it was about a human living amongst robots. I thought this because it had explained that Rick was chosen as the bounty hunter to find and terminate the robots. So why would someone hunt their own kind? However, after reading the first chapter, I am left wondering. In the first sentence of the chapter it described a mood organ, of which controlled their moods by the switch of a dial. So, this could either mean that they are completely robots, or that they are somehow part human with this feature. Therefore, I agree that it got very confusing when Rick started to feel emotions that he did not dial. Yet overall, I believe the author used this confusion, to his advantage, to grab the reader’s attention. For instance, right when I read the first sentence, I was even more intrigued and wanting to keep reading in order to find out more.