73 pages • 2 hours read
Philip K. DickDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 18-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary
Irmgard and Pris vote to keep Isidore alive, counter to Roy’s wishes. The three androids and Isidore listen to Buster Friendly’s radio show, awaiting the announcement that Rachael mentioned to Deckard. Irmgard says that they have waited “a long time” (111) to hear what Buster has to say. While setting up the television, Isidore finds a spider. He shows the spider to Pris but, much to his horror, she begins to torture the creature. Roy and Irmgard watch as Buster Friendly announces that he has definitive proof that the religion of Mercerism is completely fake. The entire scene of Mercer climbing a hill, Friendly claims, is actually a “bit player marching across a sound stage” (113). The androids were aware of the upcoming revelation because, they tell Isidore, Buster Friendly is one of them. Roy is delighted that Mercerism and the performative empathy that it encourages, have been exposed as a sham, designed to turn all people into a manageable, single entity through their empathy.
Isidore puts the spider out of its misery. He is so overwhelmed by emotion that he enters into a trance. Isidore has a vision of Mercer in a tomb-like world. In the vision, Mercer himself approaches Isidore and admits to being an actor named Al Jarry. Even though he is a fraud, Jarry claims, he will endeavor to continue helping people who need him. Mercer holds out a hand to Isidore; he offers him the spider, now restored to its former self. Before Isidore can respond, he is shaken out of his trance by the warning alarm. Roy announces that “there’s a bounty hunter in the building” (117).
Chapter 19 Summary
Roy sends Isidore to investigate the source of the alarm. Outside, Isidore releases the spider into the old, ramshackle garden. Deckard steps out of a shadow. Isidore instinctively tells the bounty hunter where to find the androids. He is pleased that, for once, he has vital information. When Deckard refers to him as a “chickenhead,” however, his mood turns. Isidore issues a dire warning to Deckard: If he kills the androids, he will be excluded from Mercerism forever. Deckard ignores Isidore and enters the apartment building.
In the shadows of the building, Deckard spots a strange figure. Mercer appears to him and assures him that what he is doing “has to be done” (120). Mercer tells Deckard that Pris is laying in ambush. When Deckard turns around, Pris attacks. Deckard is shocked that she resembles Rachael so closely. He hesitates in reaching for his weapon but manages to kill Pris just in time. Deckard searches for Roy and Irmgard inside the apartment. They shoot at him, but he manages to kill both androids. Deckard is surprised that Pris—due to her resemblance to Rachael—was a bigger challenge than Roy. Rachael and the models that resemble her are deliberately designed to evoke loving feelings from men. Deckard sees Isidore crying over Pris’s dead body.
Chapter 20 Summary
After completing his assignment, Deckard is horrified with himself. He compares himself to a “famine or plague” (122), and he hates the entire business of being a bounty hunter. After a scathing comment to Isidore, he leaves the apartment building. At home, Iran is agitated. She tells him that someone killed their new goat by pushing it from the roof. Iran describes the killer, and Deckard knows that it was Rachael. Feeling numb, Deckard takes his hovercar north and knows that he is “going to die” (123).
Chapter 21 Summary
Deckard flies the car all night. In the morning, he arrives in a desolate, barren, “strange place” (124). After landing, he tries to call Dave Holden but cannot reach the injured bounty hunter. Deckard begins to walk across the wasteland. His journey resembles Mercer’s journey. Thinking about his success, Deckard feels nothing but hollow defeat as he has “become an unnatural self” (125). A rock strikes him and, in an exhausted trance, Deckard feels himself fuse with Mercer. He now feels exactly like Mercer, doomed to spend his whole life trudging up a hill in some pointless struggle.
Deckard is shocked by the sight of his own shadow. He turns and runs back to his car. Worried about flying in his delirious state, he tries to reach Bryant but he is unavailable. Instead, he speaks to Bryant’s secretary. She passes along a message from Iran, who is concerned by her husband’s behavior. Deckard blabbers about his dead goat and his current location, near the border between California and Oregon. He claims to have “permanently fused” (126) with Mercer and insists that he is no longer a bounty hunter. Deckard says that Mercer cannot be exposed as a fraud because that would mean that “reality is a fake” (127). Promising to speak to his wife, Deckard ends the call. He thinks regretfully about having sex with Rachael. He now believes that he should have killed her instead.
Chapter 22 Summary
Deckard looks down. In the dust, he spots a toad beside his feet. The toad is an auspicious animal; long thought extinct, the toad is known to be one of Mercer’s favorite animals. Now that he feels exactly like Mercer, Deckard finds a toad in the wild. He is astonished and packs the toad in a box before flying home. Returning to Iran, Deckard tries to show her the toad. Iran disappoints Deckard by revealing that the toad is a robotic replicant. She shows him the toad’s control panel. Deckard is crestfallen. He tries to explain his exhausting experiences to Iran, delving into the physical and moral exhaustion he feels. Iran sets Deckard’s mood organ to “long deserved peace” (131), and Deckard falls asleep. With her husband asleep, Iran thinks about the toad. She regrets ruining her husband’s excitement but she resolves to take proper care of the electric toad. Now “feeling better” (132), she drinks a cup of black, hot coffee.
Chapters 18-22 Analysis
After a long search, Deckard’s encounter with the three remaining androids is quick and brutal. After spending so long worrying about whether he will be able to kill an android that looks like Rachael, he surprises himself with the speed with which he kills Pris. Likewise, the supposedly strong and ruthless Roy Baty is dispatched without too many issues. Deckard proves himself to be the best bounty hunter in his department, achieving a level of professional and financial success that he never believed possible, but he feels unsatisfied.
Rather than thinking about his newfound fortune or the androids themselves, the most memorable aspect of Deckard’s mission is his encounter with Mercer. When Deckard returns home from the mission, he learns that Rachael murdered his prized goat. The shock of the goat’s death sends Deckard into a strange, dissociative state. He takes his hovercar out into the wasteland and hallucinates, believing that he fuses with or becomes Mercer. In the religion of Mercerism, the Mercer trudges up and down a hill in an endless cycle. Deckard has been caught in a similar cycle. He begins the novel as a cynical, unempathetic figure, but he is unfulfilled and begins to develop empathy for the androids he is employed to kill. His budding empathy sends him on a journey of discovery, an ascent up a metaphorical hill while beset on all sides by enemies. Deckard wanders through an empty, dusty landscape. He performs the real, physical journey to match Mercer’s artificial metaphor. Rather than acting as the killer counterpoint to Mercer’s martyrdom, Deckard embraces the fusion of both roles. He becomes a duality, the ascent and the descent, the artificial and the authentic, all in one person. Deckard will quit as a bounty hunter, and the decision comes as a relief to him following his fusion with Mercer. He has regained his empathy, regained his humanity, and regained his hope for a better future, even in the brutal, dystopic wasteland of a world that he inhabits.
The encounter takes place shortly after Buster Friendly reveals to the world that Mercerism is a fake system of social control. He and the other androids believe that Friendly’s revelation will unveil humanity’s hypocrisy, revealing the Artificiality of an entire belief system and thereby helping the androids achieve social acceptance. Deckard’s encounter with Mercer reveals their miscalculation; Deckard, and by extension humans, does not care about the reveal. Deckard assumes Mercer’s symbolic role, becoming the killer to balance out Mercer’s martyrdom. They are part of the same abstract system, and details like truth and evidence no longer matter. The androids underestimated the intensity of humanity’s ability to overlook empirical evidence in favor of emotional resonance.
This point is driven home by the toad Deckard finds in the wasteland. Though he initially believes that the toad is real, Iran reveals that it is artificial. She struggles with the guilt of breaking her husband’s happiness. This guilt is an echo of Deckard wrestling with whether he should share his suspicion with Resch that Resch might be an android. The guilt is a form of empathy, as Iran recognizes her husband’s happiness and empathizes with its sudden loss. In feeling guilty, she provides a closing example of the quiet, human empathy that endures despite the novel’s events. After learning about the toad, Deckard goes to bed. Iran resolves to care for the toad and sets Deckard’s mood organ to “long deserved peace” (131). The toad represents a glimmer of optimism for Deckard, and Iran finds a new purpose in caring for the toad and Deckard in tandem. Iran has spent a long time coveting a live animal to care for as an outlet for her empathy. She failed to satisfy herself with the mood organ, the empathy box, and the electric sheep. Even the live goat was dead before she could achieve any degree of emotional satisfaction from its care. With Deckard passed out, Iran realizes that she has another option: He becomes the vessel through which she can express her empathy. After retiring as a bounty hunter, he becomes an ideal replacement for their goat. In his helpless state, he needs Iran to care for him. As she says to the salesman at the pet store, her husband loves his electric toad and she wants to be sure that he is happy. Iran is the real winner of the novel, finding a new means of expressing her empathy, restoring her marriage, and a new understanding of the world.
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