Reflections Within Eyes

Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? recounts a grim reality in which humanity must look at its creations, and the consequences of them, everywhere they look. To illustrate this, the most difficult thing for the protagonist, Rick Deckard, to grapple with is not the nuclear fallout or the emptiness from the exodus from earth, it is what was created in their wake, androids. In his job as a bounty hunter, he is tasked with the job of finding and then “retiring” rogue androids (3-4). To do so he administers the “Voigt Empathy Test” which androids, and more specifically their eyes, cannot pass due to a lack of empathy (28).

According to the morals set in the book, that lack should theoretically make it so that destroying them is faultless. Yet, when Rick gazes into some of their eyes he sees his own humanity reflected back at him, making it so he cannot help feeling guilt, shame, and even in lapses of judgement, mercy. This is something which other bounty hunters and his prey criticize him for, for seeing his own soul in the empty windows of an android’s unhuman eyes is a recipe for his undoing (124, 132-133).

For instance, when he faces the second android, Luba Luft, “The stage makeup enlarged her eyes; enormous and hazel, they fixed on him and did not waver,” illuminating her confidence and her capability to deceive him (92). More specifically, the makeup amplifying her eyes signifies the intent for her to use the male gaze to her advantage, while her own unwavering gaze expresses her poise in the role that she has cultivated.

As time goes on though, her eyes, even as made up and prepared for the empathy test as they are, begin to unveil their true inhuman nature as, “The huge and intense eyes did not flicker, did not respond” (93). Rick, realizing this continues to push her, which leads her to redouble her act as, “Her immense eyes widened with childlike acceptance, as if he had revealed the cardinal mystery of creation” (95). This false innocence is an attempt to regain the advantage she believed she had, playing yet again on his emotions to evade his detection. Just like the makeup though it is over the top to accommodate the lack of a genuine response.

Therefore, because it is ineffective at halting Rick’s momentum, she tries a new approach and, “Nervously fluttering, she rubbed her cheek—and detached the adhesive disk,” to get out of taking the test entirely (97). The detaching of the adhesive disk indicates that her ploy to exaggerate and act her way out of expressing empathy has failed, leaving her no choice but to double down and resort to endangering other androids by adding them into her act.

When this fails and she realizes she is going to die, “. . . her eyes faded and the color dimmed from her face, leaving it cadaverous, as if already starting to decay,” unveiling that beneath all her bravado and planning, she is merely a desperate and soon to be lifeless automaton, only able to act like she is a part of humanity and to not ever truly join it (122).

In the aftermath of her death, Rick is shaken. Trying to get himself closure, “He plastered the adhesive disk against his cheek, arranged the beam of light until it fed directly into his eye,” to test whether he is empathizing with the now dead Luba Luft and, much to his dismay, he is (131). This revelation casts his previous and future actions into doubt. For if he can empathize with the androids there is something to empathize with, thus leading to the conclusion that he is not simply dismantling hardware, but instead jeopardizing the morals and justice he holds so dear by potentially committing murder.

And so, the android’s eyes, unhuman as they are, go beyond themselves and into the minds of the humans that view them. In those minds, they find the embers of empathy that they themselves lack. In short, their eyes are still windows to the soul, just not their own. How others act around and towards them shows the nature of the souls in question. Whether humans are virtuous or vile, kind or cruel, empathetic or callous, the androids will unveil that which people seek to hide and in doing so they are the judge of humanity, not only for what it is, but what it can become.