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

told we would come and 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 it is 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, I am

suggesting that perhaps the real monsters are humans that hunt enslaved androids that run away

without a second thought, but since the androids are a reflection of what is monstrous about

humanity we will focus on them. So what about these creatures is so 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 are

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

after their devastating aftermath of war. With the help of androids the lives of humans became

more simple, humans no longer had to live in a wasteland that was slowly killing them and they

were living peacefully on Mars. The androids, however, are not considered people, they are

considered machines and there only purpose is to make humanity comfortable after a disastrous

event. Fear got struck into humans when they start seeing human traits in androids, the androids

began to rebel and live among every day people and had 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 do not seem out of the ordinary, like feeling empathy for one

another. Unfamiliar reality are things that you do not 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 intimately connected with humans on a daily basis, that humans no longer

question these machines. What humans find so out of the ordinary with the androids is that over

time androids began to look like humans and even start thinking for themselves, leading humans

to fear the androids that once helped them. Jessica M. Coon article The Uncanny demonstrates

that one might feel strange fear when an inanimate object exhibits behavior one would expect

from a living object, an uncanny effect is produced. People did not expect this behavior to come

from a controlled substance but when it did happen that is why people were quick to fear it. The
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fear that humans experience is due to the fact that something that is nothing like them, now

moves, looks, and thinks like they do. 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, The Rosen Organization assured us, as you know that a Nexus-6 could be

delineated by standard profile tests. The Rosen Organization doesnt want people to be able to

distinguish androids from themselves, but police enforcements makes androids outlaws, their

reasoning 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 them 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 question what kind of 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 anxiety as A feeling of worry, nervousness, or

unease, usually about an upcoming event or certain outcome. These humans have already had

so much happen to them, the destruction of the world, animals and the environment dying off,

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 experience so many

new 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
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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 does believe that he hunts androids to make his contribution to society, he eventually

begins to question everything due 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 android is suppose to look like a human and think like one

why was sexual attraction between humans and androids so taboo. When Rick finally gets to

meet an android, named Rachel Rosen, he feels attraction toward her like he would with a real

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

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

come face to face with an android that looks exactly like Rachel he believes that he will not

being able to kill the android because of his new empathy toward them.

With society's constant fear of the androids living among them 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 the people of

this novel are trying to live by the Human Condition and segregate themselves from anything

that does not possess these qualifications. 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 do not have and
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the irony that this shows is 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, but 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 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 probably 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 are as unempathical
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and scary as humans, even though they 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 do not

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.

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.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012.

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.

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.
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Smith, Melinda, et al. Phobias and Irrational Fears. Phobias and Irrational Fears: Tips for
Confronting and Breaking Free of Phobias, HelpGuide, Oct. 2017,