A Scanner Darkly - Part 2 Reflection

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2:40 AM
(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.

About the author

Alissa is a Junior English for New Media student at Dakota State University. This blog and its posts exist as a part of the course: ENGL 343 - Literature: Philip K. Dick.

2 comments:

  1. I really like your descritipns of the characters in your post. I'd also agree that this novel felt different from the other novels we've read. Rather than spending time developing many characters, this story focuses more on one and the battles he has to fight.

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  2. I have never actually thought about that saying before but I like how you connected it to this novel: Who are people when we are not around? It's a very good point, a lot of us wear masks and hide who we truly are because we are afraid what people will think of us and if they will not associate with us if they knew the truth. That quote now has meaning to me and I will hopefully never forget it :)

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