Author: wvalley20

Through the first part of the satirical novel, I was just about ready to label White noise as the worst book I read during all of high school. That is with other hard-hitters such as Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice (great movie, dull read) to contend with. Here’s why:

There is simply little structure, or plot. I will be the first person to say that I need a novel to have at least some degree of structure, or some reason for me to read it. The book begins in media res, and as the reader I had no clue who many of the characters are and more importantly, I had no idea what they were all doing. There is no conflict, no reason for me to care a single iota about anybody in the story. Perhaps the only entertaining chapter of the first part was chapter 8, in which Jack begins taking lessons in order to learn how to speak German, despite his being fluent in the written language. But this hilarious chapter was interspersed with many seemingly meaningless ones, such as the entire chapter devoted to recounting the day his child wouldn’t stop crying. Why was this chapter included? Nobody knows. Once the plot picked up, I became slightly intrigued, with the explosion, and the toxic cloud that set Jack’s date of death. However, an action-heavy plot was never the point of the novel, so it bounced between plot and ther random chapters. 

Honestly, by the end I didn’t know mostly what was going on. Everything about the novel just seemed irrational (as I’m sure was the point). I was almost hoping that Jack would get so overwhelmed by his fear of death that he would resort to killing himself with the gun he got from Vernon. It would have been the ultimate irony: bringing about what he fears the most, while also dying in the same way as Hitler. It also makes no sense, but neither did the rest of the book, so why not?

It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.

This is a quote from one of Officer Ed Tom Bell’s soliloquies from near the beginning of the novel. Throughout, one of the recurring themes is Ed Tom’s attempt to understand the mind of Chigurh, and on a greater level, criminals like him. However, he constantly falls short, thus the title, in a literal sense. 

In this passage, Bell seems to be almost reconciling with the idea that certain people are predestined to be criminals, and they are incapable of living a lawful life. 

I want to take a brief look at this idea, and how it is used within the United States today. Whether or not this is true has a tremendous impact on how we treat criminals in the criminal justice system. Are there certain people who are unable to live peacefully within a system, as Bell states in this quote? Throughout the entirety of the novel, Chigurh never even considers whether or not what he’s doing is lawful, or even good. It seems like he perfectly fits the mold of that type of criminal, which is most likely influencing Ed Tom’s thoughts. Despite living by a philosophy of taking control of one’s life, Chigurh repeatedly chooses to murder, to steal, and to commit many other crimes. As it stands today, nearly half of US states have the death penalty, while many more all over the country are sentenced to life in prison. Are these criminals destined for a life behind bars? It seems like Ed Tom would say yes.

“Mercer doesn’t have to do anything alien to him. He suffers but at least he isn’t required to violate his own identity.” (241) (Rick talking)

“Go and do your task, even though you know it’s wrong.” (242) (Mercer talking)

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.” (243) (Mercer talking)

These quotes stem from Rick’s desire not to kill the last three Andys. He feels empathy towards them, and he now considers it morally unjustifiable. Rick feels as though killing them violates his identity, especially now that his feelings towards them have changed.

However, Rick decides after his conversation with Wilbur Mercer in the empathy box that although it is morally wrong, it is something that has to be done. I have already explored the idea in past blogs about whether or not it is right to retire the androids, but these thoughts from Mercer completely bypass that question. Instead, Mercer is saying that it doesn’t matter in this instance whether or not it is right, to retire them, because it is something that has to be done. It is this logic that ultimately causes Rick to decide to hunt down the Andys. Despite the logic’s effectiveness in convincing Rick, the questions still remain: Is what Mercer said correct? Is it possible to live without doing wrong to anything or anyone? Or, as Mercer would put forth, does our action which positively affects one inherently negatively affects another? The answers are incredibly determinant of how we decide to live our lives and which actions we decide to take.

Upon the killings of the androids Garland and Luba Luft by Phil Ressler, Rick wonders to himself how Phil is able to dispatch them so easily, seemingly without a second thought. At first, partially due to the fact that Garland had told him Phil was an Andy, that this is the explanation for his cold-blooded approach towards bounty hun ting. However, once Rick tests him and determines that Phil is in fact not an Android, Rick begins to doubt his own feelings. Rick does have a base level of sympathy for the Andys, which he can’t explain, and which is proven when he takes the Voigt-Kampff (empathy) test on himself. Despite Phil discrediting his empathy as simple physical attraction towards Luba Luft, Rick knows that this is untrue. Rick begins to doubt himself, wondering if he is a capable and qualified bounty hunter, and if there is something wrong with him.

Rick’s qualms about his ability to effectively complete his job underly a myriad of very important and real philosophical questions. Do the Andys merit empathy from humans, or in other words, should humans care when they die? Let’s say the answer for the Nexus 6 Androids is no. Why exactly is that, and is there a point to which the Androids have become so humanlike that they become treated as humans? All of this boils down to what makes a human a human. I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I expect them to be explored further as I finish the story. Furthermore, these are questions that must be answered in our real world. With an assumption of continuous progress, we will reach a point where we are capable of creating androids similar to those in this novel, and it’s imperative we determine how best to deal with them when the time comes.

Throughout the beginning chapters of the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” the ownership of animals as pets is implied to be among the most important aspects of life on post World War Terminus Earth. The obvious deep meaning behind caring for an animal is mentioned early on when Rick (the protagonist) is talking to his neighbor about their animals. In conversation, his neighbor mentions that people consider it immoral and anti-empathetic to not take care of an animal, even though it is no longer mandated by the government, as it was in the immediate aftermath of WWT. That of course begs the question, why was this policy put into place, and does it fully explain the connection the earthlings have with animals, or is the connection deeper?

Prior to their conversation, when introducing Rick’s electric sheep, the narrator states that “To say, “Is your sheep genuine?” would be a worse breach of manners than to inquire whether a citizen’s teeth, hair, or internal organs would test out authentic.” This implies that people’s pets are beyond companions, but they have become integral to their lives and something that people can’t live without.

Despite this obvious need to own animals, it seems as though the animals serve no purpose. When Rick walks up on his apartment building rooftop to see his sheep, all the animals are simply tethered in place, or grazing on grass. There is clearly something missing in this equation, some explanation for why these animals are seen as being of the utmost importance, yet also seemingly not, based on how they are left alone by their owners. I’m sure more will be revealed upon continuing my reading.

Officer Ed Tom Bell is clearly an experienced officer, who has witnessed numerous crimes, and seen into the minds of a myriad of criminals. However, he still has difficulty understanding the minds of those perpetrators as seen in the first soliloquy. And despite his experience, he still considers Chigurh to be some new breed of criminal, a special sort of evil that in all his years Ed Tom Bell has not seen. This begs the question: Is Chigurh a different criminal mind from those Bell has witnessed in the past, and if not, why does Bell perceive it to be so?

Uncertainty is another clear element present within his soliloquies. This comes across both in how he deals with his line of work, but also in his dealings with criminals, especially Chigurh. With every stop, he knows that he is putting his life in danger, but he considers that to be a part of the job. He appears to be a realist, not living in a fantasy of what he wishes to be right. Ed Tom is also uncertain how to interpret and handle Chigurh. He can’t understand Anton, as his brain works in a completely different manner from his own, and so the soliloquies demonstrate the struggle of Ed Tom to attempt to understand, and his failures to do so.