Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Style 1 key example

While the characters experience many interactions and challenges that resonate in the world of the reader, the book never goes long without mentioning an unfamiliar technology or custom that the reader has to learn about from context clues. The mood organ, for instance, appears immediately in Chapter 1. It is a part of mundane life for the characters, and so no one ever fully explains how it works. By slightly alienating the reader this way, Dick invites a sort of critical, anthropological reading of the characters' culture.

Through this outsider's lens, the characters and their problems at times look a bit silly. They are living in a devastated landscape where it would be difficult for anyone to remain resilient, but many of their problems seem as though they could be easily solved if only the characters would get out of their own way. Dick's close third-person narration sometimes uses lofty language instead of plain to convey a sense of the characters' self-seriousness. One example occurs in Chapter 21, when Rick finally experiences fusion while he is climbing a hill:

At that moment the first rock—and it was not rubber or soft foam plastic—struck him in the inguinal region. And the pain, the first knowledge of absolute isolation and suffering, touched him throughout in its undisguised actual form.

Cite this Quote

The phrase "inguinal region" is a euphemistic way to say that a rock hits Rick in the groin. It borders on comical that this is the start of his religious awakening. The mentions of "first knowledge" and "suffering," the abstract idea of pain as something with an "undisguised actual form," and the sentence structure that begins with "and" are all reminiscent of Christianity and the bible. The mysticism and gravity of the language seem mismatched with what is actually happening. This mismatch is the point. From the outside, this moment looks like nothing. Inside Rick's head, though, he is undergoing a major transformation. The mismatched language emphasizes the importance of subjectivity. The same event can mean everything or nothing depending on how a person experiences it. The novel's focus on subjectivity ultimately troubles the notion that anyone can know what it means for anyone else to be human, or even to be merely alive.