Friday, January 25, 2013

DADOES foil characters: Blog Post 1 for Univ 112

Over winter break, my University 112 teacher had us read the 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. This book was placed in 2021 where World War III killed millions of people and some of the population left to go to Mars. On this other planet, androids were deemed servants of the humans living there and were permanently banned from Earth. The novel is all about the main character, Rick Deckard, acting as a bounty hunter to search and kill the illegal androids. However, the problem he's faced with is the difficulty in distinguishing the humans from the new Nexus-6 robots. 
Colby Brooks' Cover for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?                             

Above is an alternative book cover for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Also shown above is the movie cover for Blade Runner, which is based on this book. For an assignment on January 23, 2013, we were asked to describe how Rick Deckard and John Isodore are characterized in chapters 1-4. Also, we had to describe how Isodore serves as a foil for Deckard.

Deckard is the main character in the story and he's greatly concerned with what people think about him.On the other hand, Isodore isn't as concerned with what people think about him. This is probably the way that more people should think since everyone is their own person. Since Isordre is what the society includes as "special", he feels like a complete outcast living alone in an apartment complex. Deckard's personality is reflected reversely from this. He is constantly trying to obey his boss' rules and fit into society by having as much empathy as possible. Philip K. Dick most likely chose Isodore as Deckard's focus because of the extreme differences between the two. By the end of the book, Isodore has befriended some of the androids as Deckard is on the mission to retire them all. Variations in two characters add a lot of controversial elements to the story. The author did a great job in deciding which character to pick as a foil for Rick Deckard.

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