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Alondra Blanco
Professor Holly Batty
English 102 (V 25031)
November 15, 2015
Looking Through a Mirror and Seeing a Monster

Growing up we were told that if we misbehave that monsters would come and take us away.

This fear is used to get children to behave themselves with little to no assistance from their

parents. As children continue to grow they begin to view the world through a different light, and

they start to notice that people are just as cruel and unsympathetic as the monsters that we were

told we would take us from our beds at night. So why is that we are afraid of things that look like

they could cause us pain and distress, like fangs and and decomposed bodies brought back from

the dead; and not of ordinary people who look just like us and contribute to our everyday

society? Is it perhaps that we as humans are convinced we cannot hurt ourselves, since human

see a little bit of themselves in other people? Or maybe its that because we as a civilized culture

would not do anything so ruthless? In Philip K. Dicks novel Do Androids Dream of Electric

Sheep The purpose of introducing a creature so foreign from our nature and fearing them because

of their similarities to humans justifies that empathy in humanity is not inborn but acquired

through cardinal influence. Although many would argue that the monsters in the novel are the

androids due to the fact that they lack human emotions and empathy, the real monsters are

humans that hunt runaway enslaved androids without a second thought, but sense the androids

are the monsters of this novel we will focus on them. So what about these creatures is

monstrous? Well first have to understand what it is about these creatures that actually frighten

us, then what fear or anxiety is provoked by the presence of these monsters and finally what we

learn about the human condition through the actions of this monstrous beings.
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Humans have a tendency to be afraid of things that they do not understand, these androids

were treated no differently. The androids are made by human in an attempt to rebuild their

civilization. With the help of androids the lives of humans become more simple, humans no

longer have to live in a wasteland that is slowly killing them and they are living peacefully on

Mars. The androids are not considered people, they are considered machines and there only

purpose is to make humanity comfortable after a disastrous event. Fear get struck into humans

when they start seeing human traits in androids, the androids begin to rebel and live among every

day people and have no problem blending in with their surroundings. This is frightening to

humans because of the uncanny theory presented by Sigmund Freud. The uncanny theory

presents us with familiar reality (Heimlich) and an unfamiliar reality (Unheimlich) in which

humans can identify a familiar reality with everyday behavior and normal things that dont seem

out of the ordinary, like feeling empathy for one another. Unfamiliar reality are things that you

dont come by regularly and are strange and out of the ordinary, like not feeling sympathy or

compassion for other human beings. The humans in this novel are familiar with android's, seeing

as they are a part of everyday life. These androids help the humans and so intimately connected

with humans that humans no longer question these machines. What humans find out of the

ordinary with the androids is that over time androids being to look like humans and even start

thinking for themselves, leading humans to fear the androids that once helped them; When an

inanimate object exhibits behavior one would expect from a living object, an uncanny effect is

produced. The fear that humans experience is due to the fact that something that is nothing like

them, now moves, looks, and thinks like they do. Even more so, is what fuels people to be afraid

of the androids. In the novel the Rosen association works to create androids that are very

humanly convincing, they are trying to make humanistic androids part of daily life, but society,
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especially the police enforcements, makes androids outlaws, their excuse is that these runaways

are dangerous and deadly. The humans of this novel are constantly being told that these androids

are a danger to them and this causes to panic internally, making them close minded to the actual

feelings that androids have.

Humans do have a reason to fear the androids, the androids will do anything to keep their

secrets hidden, even if it means harming a human being. This leads to what fear or anxiety do

androids provoke, but in order to analyze these fears and anxieties we must first know what fear

and anxiety is. Webster defines fear as A belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely

to cause pain, or a threat. and anxiety as A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, usually

about an upcoming event or certain outcome. These humans have already so much happen to

them, the destruction of the world, animals and the environment dying, and having to move to a

foreign environment away from their origin, all this fear continues to build until they are finally

happy with their lives and have learned to adapt. However, they begin to panic and become

easily afraid of androids due to the fact that they have experienced so many knew changes. As

said before the fear element that is demonstrated in the novel is fueled by law enforcement,

humans have not received any reassurance that they are safe from these creatures that live among

them. According to Healthguide.org section Fear and Phobias It is normal and even helpful to

experience fear in dangerous situations. Fear is an adaptive human response. It serves a

protective purpose, activating the automatic fight-or-flight response. Society, after the ruins,

has people believing that androids are something to fear and the people who believe this as a

norm like bounty hunter Rick Deckard, our main protagonist of the story, choose to fight the

androids and protect those who can not do anything other than be scared. While Rick Deckard
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does believe that he hunts androids to make his contribution to society, he eventually being to

question everything do to finally opening up and giving in to his libidinal desires. Ricks libidinal

desires is that he wants to understand what it is about androids that make them how they are. In

other words if an androids is suppose to look like a human and think like one why were they so

taboo. When Rick finally gets to know an androids he feels attraction for her like he would with

a real woman. It is then that Rick has to battle with is super ego, which tells his what society is

expecting from him. This constant conflict ultimately cause Rick anxiety because when he has to

come face to face with and android he dreads not being able to kill like he used to because of his

new empathy toward androids.

With society's constant fear of the androids living among them and and the main protagonist,

Rick Deckard, starting to question his feeling about the creatures that he once hated passionately,

one starts to ask themselves what this says about humanity as a whole. We can see that through

human condition is what the people of this novel are trying to live by and segregate themselves

from. The human condition is defined as A positive or negative aspect of being human (like

birth, growth, reproduction, love, and death.) by Webster's dictionary. Since the androids dont

share any of those qualities, they are not seen as humans, making them the outcasts of society.

Humans fear the qualities that the androids dont have and it makes it ironic that the humans of

this novel also dont share some of these qualities. Empathy is one of the qualities that both

androids and humans lack, however human can be empathetic they have just become too

traumatized to do so, and androids dont empathize at all. In Robin Payes article titled Empathy:

Whats in it to feel others pain? Empathizing with the people around you would involve

activating the same brain structures that would be active if you yourself were experiencing the
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pain, fear, or disgust the other person is experiencing. Androids do not have this quality and that

is why a special empathetic test is made to single them out. Humans were perfectly fine with the

androids until they began to rebel, I guess humans didn't get the message about slavery the first

time around, these androids became fugitives the minute they no longer were under human

control, there[androids] human-like thoughts told them that that is not something that they

wanted to do. Humans, instead of blaming themselves for androids running away and rebelling

instead scapegoat the androids into making them look dangerous. In harvard business review

titled why you need an imaginary scapegoat states that when the human mind come to panic we

direct our anger and anxieties at an invisible they, the forces working against us seem more

tangible, so we feel like we have more power to fight them. humans jumped on this idea that the

androids were the real bad guys because they were different and didn't look back on it. This is

probably why Rick Deckard, who was just following orders, didnt question what his job

required of him and up until he actually met an android never questioned killing one.

Even though we grew up thinking that monsters were these horrible creatures that were going

to come in the night to inflict pain on us, we now know that it is the people that surround us that

we have to keep an eye out for. The monsters that are portrayed in the novel as unempathical and

scary are not necessarily the actual monsters. Humans have just as much to blame with the

destruction of their world. Humans are just like the androids being that they have little to no

emotion in them and that they too have to question their humanity. The humans of this novel are

sheep, in that they follow what is presented to them to do and dont question it. We can begin to

see that humanity isnt something that you are born with or into, but it's something that you start

to learn.
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Works Cited Page

Coon, Jessica M. The Uncanny. UIowa Wiki, Topic in British Culture and Identity , 6 May 2012,

wiki.uiowa.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=74615767#id-"TheUncanny"-heimlich.

Smith, Melinda, et al. Phobias and Irrational Fears. Phobias and Irrational Fears: Tips for

Confronting and Breaking Free of Phobias, HelpGuide, Oct. 2017,

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Payes, Robin Stevens. News. Empathy: What's in It to Feel Others' Pain?, The Dana Foundation,

11 June 2013, www.dana.org/News/Details.aspx?id=43284.

Eyal, Nir. Why You Need an Imaginary Scapegoat. Decision Making , Harvard Business Review , 6

Feb. 2017, hbr.org/2017/02/why-you-need-an-imaginary-scapegoat.