VALIS - Part 1 Reflection

Valis is weird. I don't mean that lightly either. In the past PKD novels we've read for class, characters experienced drugs and the mentality brought along with that. Here we are presented with both the inter and outer workings of a man as he starts his decline into insanity. The narrator is Horselover Fat, telling us the story of Horselover Fat. At the beginning, it seems as if he is one person looking back at an event. As the story pushes on, the narrator removes himself from Fat--sometimes saying 'I' then correcting himself to say 'Fat' instead-- and often says he was one of the people talking and debating Fat on various things. As Fat becomes convenced that God has talked to him, the narrator toys with the idea. He says that he adopts views suiting who he is talking with, even though he is talking to himself at times. Fat saw the laser pointer light shone on the narrator's arm at one point and it reminded him of when he had seen God.

The novel itself is insanely interesting. Unfortunately, it is just as hard to follow as it is interesting. It seems to be one part narrative, two parts philosophical paper.  At times I'm so distracted by the ideas Fat is cooking up that I lose track of where exactly our characters are or in which setting the conversation is taking place. I'm hoping that things will become clearer as I progress in the novel.

A Scanner Darkly - Part 2 Reflection

(2006) Movie Adaptation of A Scanner Darkly

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it,does it make a sound?"

I cannot count the number of times I've heard this saying. Not one of those times have I given it the thought that I did during my reading of A Scanner Darkly. The phrase, probably due to repetition, had deteriorated so much in meaning that it lost whatever intelligence it had contained. A Scanner Darkly put it back in perspective. Who are people when we're not around? Does a thing or person still exist as we know it when it is out of our perception? As Fred begins to lose track of his different personas he questions both people around him and himself. When he first starts viewing the holotapes of Arctor's house he worries about the side of Donna he may see. He fears the loss of the niceness, the good image he has built up of Donna. Furthermore, what could he find out about himself as Arctor? Fred's mind starts to split at this point. The divide between Bob Arctor and Fred widens, until it is unbridgeable. Were the tapes a contributing factor in this? Was Fred granted that insight into his own mind as Arctor and his mind chose to separate those parts rather than piece together a single identity? Fred becomes the awareness of the logical side of the mind, while Arctor claims the creativity and freedom. Fred-Arctor has seperated into two parts: good and evil, law bringer and doper, Fred and Arctor.

Before I said I didn't like Arctor. As his mind put him into two persons ( and later into a united, vegetable Bruce ) my opinion of him morphed. I think I like Fred, as he was after the separation. I pitied Bruce more than anything. Arctor, free of his memories of being a narq, just became more of an ass.

Donna is a character I found myself questioning more and more as the novel progressed. Toward the beginning, she was Arctor's goal, both sexually and to progress his career. The middle of the novel allowed that 'dealer' motivation to fade away, allowing the focus on the relationship between her and Arctor and the development of her character as an individual to flourish. At the end of the novel she is shown to have not been a tool of Arctor but rather the one pulling the strings. A federal agent, though we are only given fringe details on her position. The seeds of this suspicion were planted earlier on, most notably when he saw her appear where Connie should have been. I would have passed it off as hallucination, if not for the fact that the discrepancy had appeared both while he was in bed with her and when he as Fred watched objectively from the holotapes.

A Scanner Darkly felt very differently from the other PKD novels we have read thus far in class. A focus, for the most part, on one character. Though that one character later branched off into multiple awarenesses, we witnessed the deterioration. Arctor was the puppet the entire time, even when he thought he was the one in charge. His downfall was orchestrated by people more important than he, all for a good we will never know.

A Scanner Darkly - Part 1 Reflection (Or why I'm starting to both hate and love Bob Arctor)

I say it every time. Philip K. Dick has a gift when it comes to creating believable worlds and populating those worlds with vibrant characters. A Scanner Darkly is, once again, no exception. But for the first time I find my self in conflict with the character he has given us; I don't like Bob Arctor.

Arctor started off the same as any character to me. He is a complex man somehow lodged at the pivotal point between the 'straight' world and the world of Substance-D. Much like our other leading men in the past, he was thrust into a position that gave him a unique look at the universe PKD had created for us. Like some of the prior protagonists, he had a moral high ground given to him by position. Deckard of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was a officer charged with decommissioning rogue androids.  Arctor is a undercover narc agent, responsible for busting and reporting on the drug business in the city. Deckard goes through his crisis of identity when he thinks of androids as more than machines, but Arctor's big change in personality came before we met him. And unlike Deckard's, Arctor's change of perspective failed to put him on the moral high ground.

Arctor hit his head. That bump on a kitchen cabinet convinced him to leave his wife and two daughters, quit his job, and start life anew.  I had been tolerating his character until that detail was revealed. I had almost been looking at him, and any book protagonist until their little details are revealed, as if he were wearing one of those Scramble Suits. He was everyman, not a specific man. I didn't notice my traits, only imposed my ideas of a PKD protagonist onto him. Now the suit is off and I'm not sure I like what I'm seeing.

Disliking a character isn't necessarily a bad thing. The fact that I feel any emotions at all to a fictional person is a victory in itself. At the same time, it opens the doors to character development. On the level of the reader, Arctor will have to earn every bit of admiration he wants out of me. Within the story, Arctor could have a massive change of heart. He, like Deckard, could discover his humanity and either embrace it, or leave it behind. I'm willing to tolerate a few hundred more pages with Arctor to find out how its going to go for him.