Class and Humanity in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

In the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, he uses many classic tropes of science fiction and turns them around to comment on class and humanity to tell his story of loose androids, called “andys” and the cop hunting them, Rick Deckard. Dick cleverly uses two perspectives to tell his story of a post-apocalyptic San Francisco and the class divisions it entails. In the novel, since World War Terminus has rendered most animal species extinct, having one shows a sort of upper-class style, even if the animal is not real and is electric. This is shown in a scene from most of chapter one, where Rick discusses his electric sheep he owns with his neighbor Barbour, who owns a real horse. “He wished to god he had a horse, in fact any animal. Own and maintaining a fraud had a way of gradually demoralizing one.” (Dick, 7). Dick is showing us in this how owning a real animal is a sign of status in this world, showing how above one could be. Then, in the next chapter, he shows us the low class, being John Isidore, a man who is determined “special,” someone “classed as biologically unacceptable” (Dick, 14). John is someone with almost no social skills, who has the menial job of fixing the electric animals that people such as Deckard own. He’s put in a “special” job because people like him are not allowed to leave the Earth. In this law, Dick is showing us how humanity has become in the future, not even allowing people to leave if they’re deemed “unfit” to live in the human colonies on planets such as Mars. I believe that this, combined with the way Deckard feels about androids, comparing them to the electric animals he owns on page 40, as they “had no ability to appreciate the existence of another.” Specials, and androids in this world, as “human” as one can consider them, are just thrown to the bottom of all classes, not being allowed to do what they want and being restricted by so called “better” or “more human” people, which itself is an injustice in my eyes. Specials are still human, and should be treated as such, and if androids can develop humanity, why put them down? The class both are put into may as well be slavery (well, the androids are technically slaves) and it isn’t fair to beings who still have some semblance of a conscience.

Dick, Philip K. Blade Runner. New York: Del Rey, 2007. Print