Previous
Mood
Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Long Lashes:
Android women's remarkable eyelashes are a motif in the novel. In Chapter 6, when John Isidore meets Pris, Dick remarks on Pris's eyelashes to foreshadow her real identity:
Now he saw that she had a nice figure, although small, and nice eyes markedly established by long black lashes.
The phrase "long black lashes" echoes the first use of the motif in Chapter 4, when Rick meets Rachael on the roof of the Rosen Association Building:
She eyed him from beneath long black lashes, probably artificial.
Rick administers his empathy test on Rachael and almost has to admit that he was wrong about her—she is human after all. However, one last question demonstrates that he was right all along. One look at Rachael's beautiful eyelashes is enough to tell him that she is an android. Two chapters later, the attention to Pris's eyelashes is a teaser for the reader. It hints that John's new neighbor may not be human. Pris later slips up and accidentally introduces herself as "Rachael Rosen," confirming for the reader that she is, somehow, Rachael's double. It eventually transpires that they are the same model of android.
Rachael and Pris are not the only androids with beautiful eyelashes. Luba Luft also has "elongated lashes" that suit her well onstage as an opera singer. Whereas many opera performers would have to don false eyelashes as part of their stage makeup, Luba's false eyelashes come pre-installed. They exaggerate her femininity so that it can be recognized even from a great distance. Taken together, Rachael, Pris, and Luba's eyelashes suggest that android women are almost too feminine (and, to the straight male characters, too desirable) to be real. John is the character who most obviously falls into the eyelashes' "trap," and Pris's eyelashes frame "nice eyes" that draw him in and make him desire her company all the more. The passage goes on to mention that Pris has answered the door topless and to describe her semi-nude body in sexualized terms. Her eyelashes and odd behavior alike make her a sort of femme fatale, enrapturing John even as they suggest that she is an android and therefore dangerous to this unsuspecting, mentally disabled man.
Rick may be quicker to recognize an android "femme fatale" when he meets Rachael, but he is not as immune to his desire for her as he may wish. When he eventually has sex with her in Chapter 16, he again notices her "great eyes, with their elaborate lashes" and thinks that they "could only be those of a grown woman." The very feature that first looked artificial to Rick eventually becomes the feature he can't resist. What Rick can't admit to himself is that he desires Rachael not in spite of her artificiality but rather because she is artificial, youthful, and ageless. His wife, who is human and aging along with him, woke up that morning with "gray, unmerry eyes." Far from having sex, they spent their morning arguing about depression, unfulfilled aspirations, and Iran's growing disgust with Rick's career. It is Rick and John's desire to escape the difficult conditions of their humanity and mortality that ultimately lead them both into dangerous relationships with android women. The android women's false eyelashes represent not so much the danger of female sexuality as the danger of the fantasy that this kind of escape is possible.
Related Themes:
Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Long Lashes:
Android women's remarkable eyelashes are a motif in the novel. In Chapter 6, when John Isidore meets Pris, Dick remarks on Pris's eyelashes to foreshadow her real identity:
Now he saw that she had a nice figure, although small, and nice eyes markedly established by long black lashes.
The phrase "long black lashes" echoes the first use of the motif in Chapter 4, when Rick meets Rachael on the roof of the Rosen Association Building:
She eyed him from beneath long black lashes, probably artificial.
Rick administers his empathy test on Rachael and almost has to admit that he was wrong about her—she is human after all. However, one last question demonstrates that he was right all along. One look at Rachael's beautiful eyelashes is enough to tell him that she is an android. Two chapters later, the attention to Pris's eyelashes is a teaser for the reader. It hints that John's new neighbor may not be human. Pris later slips up and accidentally introduces herself as "Rachael Rosen," confirming for the reader that she is, somehow, Rachael's double. It eventually transpires that they are the same model of android.
Rachael and Pris are not the only androids with beautiful eyelashes. Luba Luft also has "elongated lashes" that suit her well onstage as an opera singer. Whereas many opera performers would have to don false eyelashes as part of their stage makeup, Luba's false eyelashes come pre-installed. They exaggerate her femininity so that it can be recognized even from a great distance. Taken together, Rachael, Pris, and Luba's eyelashes suggest that android women are almost too feminine (and, to the straight male characters, too desirable) to be real. John is the character who most obviously falls into the eyelashes' "trap," and Pris's eyelashes frame "nice eyes" that draw him in and make him desire her company all the more. The passage goes on to mention that Pris has answered the door topless and to describe her semi-nude body in sexualized terms. Her eyelashes and odd behavior alike make her a sort of femme fatale, enrapturing John even as they suggest that she is an android and therefore dangerous to this unsuspecting, mentally disabled man.
Rick may be quicker to recognize an android "femme fatale" when he meets Rachael, but he is not as immune to his desire for her as he may wish. When he eventually has sex with her in Chapter 16, he again notices her "great eyes, with their elaborate lashes" and thinks that they "could only be those of a grown woman." The very feature that first looked artificial to Rick eventually becomes the feature he can't resist. What Rick can't admit to himself is that he desires Rachael not in spite of her artificiality but rather because she is artificial, youthful, and ageless. His wife, who is human and aging along with him, woke up that morning with "gray, unmerry eyes." Far from having sex, they spent their morning arguing about depression, unfulfilled aspirations, and Iran's growing disgust with Rick's career. It is Rick and John's desire to escape the difficult conditions of their humanity and mortality that ultimately lead them both into dangerous relationships with android women. The android women's false eyelashes represent not so much the danger of female sexuality as the danger of the fantasy that this kind of escape is possible.
Related Themes:
Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Kipple:
Dick's novel is known for popularizing the concept of "kipple," an accumulation of consumer junk that seems to reproduce on its own. In Chapter 8, this motif appears alongside an instance of situational irony:
The scavengers’ building impressed him; large and modern, it held a good number of high-class purely office employees. The deep-pile carpets, the expensive genuine wood desks, reminded him that garbage collecting and trash disposal had, since the war, become one of Earth’s important industries. The entire planet had begun to disintegrate into junk, and to keep the planet habitable for the remaining population the junk had to be hauled away occasionally…or, as Buster Friendly liked to declare, Earth would die under a layer—not of radioactive dust—but of kipple.
Rick, who remembers Earth before World War Terminus, is "impressed" and startled by the opulence of the scavengers' office. In the world he remembers (more or less the world the reader knows), it is corporate lawyers and not trash collectors who work at "expensive genuine wood desks" atop lush, "deep-pile carpets." Trash collection, by contrast, is smelly, physically demanding, and at times dangerous. Even when sanitation workers are compensated well and granted workplace safety protections, their jobs are not associated with luxury.
Far from begrudging the scavengers their fancy office, Rick admits that it makes perfect sense. Garbage collection once functioned in the background of society to keep waste out of sight. The death and destruction of World War Terminus brought all the waste to the foreground, where no one can ignore it. Even more of a threat to society than the "radioactive dust" blanketing everything is the thick layer of "kipple" consisting of the once-precious belongings of people who are now dead or departed to Mars. There could never be a large enough landfill to hold all these objects. As John Isidore warns Pris Stratton, a whole building full of vacant apartments can be practically uninhabitable if the items of previous tenants aren't disposed of to make room for new life. Kipple thus creates a housing crisis, even in a near-empty world. "Scavenging" has become a lucrative and high-value industry because there is so much junk waiting to be taken away and repurposed before it crowds humans out of their homes.
Dick models the idea of kipple on the idea of entropy, the theory that everything in the universe tends toward chaos. Kipple, like everything else, is constantly trying to spiral out of control. And yet, kipple is not a naturally-occurring phenomenon like entropy. Rather, it is a human-made problem that can be managed by the collective efforts of humans. One way to read Dick's kipple motif is as an environmentalist warning against over-consumption. Even in the absence of nuclear warfare, the buildup of kipple raises the question of when Earth will run out of space for the garbage humans throw out. By inviting readers to imagine a worst-case-scenario, Dick challenges them to consume less before the tide of kipple begins to rise over their heads.
Related Themes:
