A tortoise called Tu'imalila died in Tonga and "the people of Tonga regarded the animal as a leader" (Reuters 1966). Similarly, in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” the characters are set in a dystopian society and highly value animals because they reveal humans' ability to show empathy. In Philip K. Dick's novel, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" the world is in a post-apocalyptic future due to a global nuclear war, which has caused millions of deaths and many species to become extinct. As technology advanced, humans migrated to Mars with androids, and those who remained on Earth wanted live animals, so companies had built lifelike robot animals for humans to take care of. The protagonist, Rick Deckard, is a bounty hunter on Earth who has been assigned the mission of eliminating the androids returned to Earth. Rick does this to earn enough money to buy an animal but struggles to accept his actions. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick, the author illustrates a dystopian society as a reaction to his personal society through the blurred sense of reality created by advanced technology, the dehumanization of citizens and the disastrous effects of the post-apocalyptic setting due to war. Through further examination of these three points, it is evident that the novel depicts a dystopian society and that it is based on the author's society. Firstly, in the novel the characters have a blurred sense of reality with Dick's use of advanced technology depicting a dystopian society as a reflection of the drug abuse of the time. To begin with, Dick uses the empathy box as a device that links followers of the religion, Mercerism, into a collective consciousness to empathize with the feelings of their religious leader. in a simulation that physically affects John Isidore, a "special". For example, when John activates his empathy box, in his consciousness, he begins to see the landscape of a hill and begins to climb the hill with his leader, Mercer: [John's] feet are now scratched; felt the same old, painful, uneven roughness under his feet and. . . smelled the acrid mist of the sky [from] . . . an alien place, distant and yet, through the box of empathy, immediately available. (Dick 22) To elaborate, John's feeling of "an alien place" is a representation of the alienation people feel when using the empathy box despite being connected to the emotions of others with the device. This technology distorts the sense of reality because it creates uncertainty in the senses of the user who physically feels the manifestation of emotions instead of truly empathizing with others. Additionally, Dick's use of electronic animals instead of real animals in the novel creates a misperception of what is real and unreal in society because the technology in the dystopian novel is advanced enough to make genuine and real animals seem almost indistinguishable. artificial. For example, when Rick discovers that the toad he found outside his car was electric and Iran apologizes for telling him the truth, Rick responds, “'No. . . I'd rather know. But it doesn't matter. Even electrical things have their own life. However paltry those lives are'” (Dick 241). To clarify, Rick believed the toad was real because the toad's design was visually realistic. Despite this, Rick accepts and appreciates the fake toad as a real life one, which suggests that artificial animals dohumans losing touch with reality, which is evidence of a dystopian society. Finally, the distorted sense of reality created by the two different technologies reflects the perpetrator's drug abuse. Specifically, Philip K. Dick was a drug addict because he “viewed drug use as a tool to break through the reality of the everyday world and liberate the spirit. Drug use, Dick said, allowed him to experience a reality that was as different as possible” (Encyclopedia.com). Likewise Dick had a confused sense of reality like the characters in the book because he was a depressed man and wanted to lose touch with reality so as not to have to face his problems. In his society, it was common for artists to use drugs, such as amphetamine, to think outside the box, which reflects the common use of advanced technology in the novel. Therefore, it is evident that the use of advanced technologies to control emotions and depict animals in the novel is evidence of a dystopian society based on the author's experience with drugs. Secondly, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” it is a dystopian novel because some citizens of the society in the novel live in a dehumanized state which is connected to the mental illness of the author and his society. For starters, humans who have genes damaged by radiation and are sometimes mentally deficient are classified as “special” and are not accepted by society. Specifically, humans who decided to stay on Earth instead of emigrating to Mars and had genetic radiation damage and were mentally deficient were classified as: Biologically unacceptable, a threat to the pristine heredity of the race. Even by accepting sterilization, he left history. It stopped. . . be part of humanity. John Isidore had been special. . . but failed to pass the minimum test of mental faculties. . . which made it. . . a chicken head. (Fuck 16-17) From the examination it turns out that there is a discriminatory hierarchical system in which the special are at the bottom since they are not even "biologically acceptable" (Fuck 16). It is especially dehumanizing for these citizens to be called “chickenhead” as the name strips them of all human qualities by referring to an animal (Dick 17). Additionally, some humans are dehumanized as they are compared to the more human-like androids, called the Nexus-6 androids. Through the Voigt-Kampff scale, which is the most advanced test used to distinguish between androids and humans, it will not work “in human schizophrenic patients, so this small class of humans could not pass the Voigt-Kampff scale. If they are tested. . . in line with police work, [they would] be assessed. . . like humanoid robots. . . [and] they would die” (Dick 38). In this way, the test suggests that humans with mental illnesses are less human than an android and would be killed. This means that these humans with mental illnesses are below androids in the hierarchical structure, and that androids are more human than these patients because androids can show empathy. To connect, the classification of some humans as “special” and “chickenheads” and the Empathy tests to differentiate humans from androids are both a reaction to the author's struggle with mental illness, the lack of research on the disease mental in the author's time period and to the discrimination that occurred for certain groups of people. For example, Dick believed he had contacted: A spiritual force that had unlocked his consciousness. By his own admission, he struggled with paranoia and, self-deprecatingly, called himself a "crazy monster." Dick used amphetamines to maintain his productivity and when his addiction reached its peak,.