Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick (1968)
“A bounty hunter who kills androids for a living begins to wonder if he is one — and whether the question even matters.”
Character Analysis
A professional who kills for legal and moral reasons that gradually come apart during a single day. Rick begins the novel believing in the Voigt-Kampff test, in the animal hierarchy, in the difference between real and fake. He ends the day having slept with an android, lost his real animal, experienced a potentially divine vision in a wasteland, and found a toad that turned out to be electric. None of his categories have held. He continues anyway. Dick never resolves whether Rick is a tragic figure or a functional one — the ambiguity is the point.
Precise, professional, slightly formal in diction. Uses official terms (retire, special, empathy quotient) without irony until the irony overwhelms him.