/lit/ - Literature » Thread #7288690

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Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:19:11 No.7288690 View Reply Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288694 >>7288718 >>7288721 >>7290106

/lit/, I have a problem.
I just finished reading pic related, and while I enjoyed it thoroughly, I feel like alot of the books message went right over my head. I haven't read much philosophy yet, but (I think) I kinda understood the books main message, even if I can't put it into words, but I feel like I missed some big allegories, like Mercerism, why did Deckard turn into Mercer at the end, why Rachael Rosen killed his goat, little things like that. Is this normal? Am I skimming or becoming distracted too much? What can I do to fix this?

tl;dr: Am I stupid if some of this books messages went over my head

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:23:20 No.7288694 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288690
Go read the Wikipedia page on gnosticism. PKD believed in that. That's what all his work revolves around.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:24:10 No.7288695 Report Delete

Quoted By:

OP here, this happens to me all the time tbh

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:33:13 No.7288715 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288737

I have a theory I thought up while I was reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that I don't think anyone has ever considered before.

My theory is that the androids and the humans are swapped in the novel. Anyone that is said to be an android is a human and anyone said to be a human is an android. The "androids" from Mars that Rick Deckard killed were all humans: the last of the humans.

Ever notice how little description is given to Rick's killing of the supposed "androids"? The only hint of anything close we get is something along the lines of a "brain box," which still leaves room for interpretation.

There's a certain line affirming the human qualities of the "androids" which I'll have to search for sometime after I get some sleep.

Alongside that, the end of the novel marks the death of the last animal, and the commencement of every animal taking on an android counterpart. Rachael's killing of the goat was an empathy move to cut off all organic life to let the android terror reign supreme.

>yfw Rick Deckard was the android dreaming of electric sheep all along

Soak that in.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:33:37 No.7288718 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288724 >>7288737 >>7291888

>>7288690
Messages and allegory = holdover thinking from HS literature class. Just read books with your imagination, thought, and artistic sense. read for character, language, images, ideas, etc.

Your own interpretations will sharpen as you get through more books. I really wouldn't worry about it

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:36:54 No.7288721 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288744

>>7288690
>I kinda understood the books main message, even if I can't put it into words

attempt to put it into words m8, I'll let you know if you're completely wrong

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:39:20 No.7288724 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288737

>>7288718
This.
Seriously.
Enjoy the books for what they are.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 1437805058684.gif, 1MiB, 167x170

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:48:06 No.7288737 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288744 >>7288770 >>7288825 >>7291888

>>7288715
I like that alot.
>>7288718
>>7288724
I never took HS literature, I left HS halfway through freshman year, went to computer homeschooling for the rest, and then went to 1 year of alternative HS, then dropped out.
That's basically what my grandad told me this morning though, about not worrying what the message was 'supposed' to be. I don't see how I couldnt care though, how could the auther not write the story with some kind of metaphor in mind? Anyway what I took from it, besides some of the 2spoopy predictions of the future, is that androids are ultimately just as human as we are; having all these constantly changing tests to tell the difference as the android-building technology closes the gap between human and synthetic kinda drove that point home for me when I realized it.

On a somewhat related side note: >mfw reading this book when I am notoriously unempathetic (unempathic?) IRL and have been described as 'robotic' by close friends and family

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 03:50:39 No.7288744 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288737
meant for this too
>>7288721

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 04:11:26 No.7288770 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288784

>>7288737
>Anyway what I took from it, besides some of the 2spoopy predictions of the future, is that androids are ultimately just as human as we are
Basically, yeah. I took it more about the question about if and at which point the androids can be considered 'human', rather than as a definitive statement that they were or could become so. In the world of DADoES, it's pretty conceivable that androids will eventually become indistinguishable from humans and more complex than them.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 04:18:08 No.7288784 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288814 >>7291888

>>7288770
Yeah that's basically what I thought. Where do I learn to be able to put my thoughts to paper like this?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 04:32:14 No.7288814 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7288832

>>7288784
High school

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 04:39:08 No.7288825 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288737
The author wrote the book with the conception with the question if Deckard is supposed to kill the robots, what keeps him from becoming as evil as the robots themselves. The book was inspired by the research that he did for The Man in the High Castle, and the robots are actually supposed to be stand ins of the nazi leaders.
But if they are evil, does he become like them by killing them? Can he be said to be human if his actions are as reprehensible as the robots are?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 04:41:07 No.7288832 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7289828

>>7288814
Oh :(

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 11:37:16 No.7289828 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7288832
You don't need high school. You just need to read a lot more. Just be careful what you're reading isn't blatant propaganda or you could end up browsing /pol/ after a few months...

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 12:38:54 No.7290106 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7290125 >>7290363 >>7291888

>>7288690
A thing people forget about authors: they're authors. They don't actually understand things. And am I the only one that sees pkd as just chuck palahniuk except instead of relishing the gay tension as he writes, he's relishing some druggie methos.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 12:43:19 No.7290125 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7290106
Both being edgelords masturbating to the image they sell to teenagers. Makes sense to me.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 13:23:15 No.7290259 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7291888

When androids start uncomfortably reaching or surpassing human intelligence, coming to seem more human, the humans begin forming cults (Mercerism) around the supposed uniqueness of subjectivity/sentience to organic life, presented as empathy. The androids develop their own cult to rival this (Buster), denying it/accusing it of being a fraud (resting entirely on a material analysis of Mercer and his fake set, with no apparent understanding of the real subjectivity/feelings experienced by the viewers). People raise pet robot animals to socially suggest this empathy, while desiring a real animal to elevate their social status and offer them legitimate feelings of emotional attachment/empathy. But they also can feel genuine empathy for their pet robots, suggesting empathy is entangled with a simple hunger for feeling/emotion itself. Rachel and the other androids exploit the possibility for human attachment to/empathy for robots, to protect themselves. The book is basically exploring the implications of "philosophical zombies" and what it might mean for the value or purpose (or lack thereof, in the material universe -- their "alienness" in a Gnostic sense) of subjectivity/sentience. Mercer is something like a Gnostic pleromatic force calling for one's spirit to give up the world (symbolized by illusory worldly temptations like Rachel) and return home, seen near the end revealing himself to Isidore (the typical "holy fool"), and causing anxiety for Rick.

Rachel killed the goat out of spite/revenge, the sacrifice resulting from Rick's failure to reject her. Rick "became" Mercer by experiencing a brief vision that seemed on the cusp of uniting him with the universal anti-material spirit Mercer represents, the underlying reality. But he retreats from the vision, out of attachment to life or fear of oneness, and subsequently mistakes the toad for something real and sacred.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 14:04:00 No.7290363 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7290106
Authors have an artistic vision and a story they set out to tell, not any one ideology to further. I don't know where the confusion between philosophers and authors came into effect, but they hold two entirely different jobs.

>[Authors] don't understand things.

Why should I believe you over them? Who says you're the one who "understands" things? You haven't written 44 novels and 121 short stories. Your accomplishments and stories -- no matter how good they are -- aren't nearly as credible as PKD's. And even after all that, PKD's a good storyteller. It's not like he's a propagandist or passing his interpretative vision off as pure fact.

>See "hermeneutics."

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 18:09:31 No.7291375 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7291888

This book sucks anon.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 20:12:03 No.7291888 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7293450

>>7288718
No way, not at all. They can help you see the significance of the work. And doing so makes you a better reader. You stunt your comprehension ability growth if you just leave yourself confused.

When I was younger I read The Sun Also Rises. I had a fuzzy collection of what to make of it all. After having read a proper analysis on the work, I realized that I had missed a lot. Everything finally 'clicked' so to speak and my attachment to the book grew ten fold. It's actually my favorite book to this day. I'd hate to think what would have happened if I left it to be.

Analysis and themes aren't even so abstract in PKD books. They're the equivalent of a good summary almost. Just having that brief paragraph of what PKD was going for gives the story resonance.

>>7288737
It's been a while since I've read Androids, but I think another theme pertained to the main character feeling/"being" less alive than the very robots that he was pursuing. Many of these smaller themes, like the one you mentioned as well, work to try and assess the reality of the human condition, evaluate the legitimacy of empathy, and explore the implications of artificial intelligence. What >>7290259 said is worth reading as well. Androids wasn't a particularly vague or indirect novel, it's possible that you may be trying to read too deeply into the book. If you enjoyed it and want to explore PKD's more philosophical books, try The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.

>>7291375
no u suck

It is PKD's most overrated novel though. Blade Runner was more important to film than Androids was to literature for sure.

>>7288784
Go get a bunch of classics that are very thematic. Start with The Old Man and the Sea, Heart of Darkness, 1984, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, and Animal Farm.

Read them alongside SparkNotes (analysis and all). I promise you it will help. These are all books with heavy symbolism, themes, and metaphors.

>>7290106
I'm pretty sure you're just an idiot.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 03:48:42 No.7293450 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7291888
nice trips. nice post.

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