What's the Deal with "Do Androids Dream..."?

[HrdBoildWndrlnd]

I know it sounds like I'm asking y'all for help with my homework or whatever but I promise I'm not. I just re-read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick which has long been a favorite of mine, but I came away with some questions this time:

• What is the evidence that Deckard has empathy for the replicants, or really any empathy at all? The accepted examples of this seem to be sleeping with Rachael and desiring real animals, but those don't make much sense to me. His relationship with Rachael is fraught (their sexual encounter can easily be described as rape) and afterwards he still has no problem killing replicants.
  • The Mercerism plotline also seems to contradict the idea that Deckard is even able to develop empathy (Deckard's vision of Mercer encourages him to kill the remaining Nexus 6's).
• What is the evidence that the replicants themselves are developing empathy? Batty kills the spider that Isidore found which seems to directly contradict the implication he's an empathetic being. They're strictly interested in their own freedom which, while certainly a just cause, is not really an empathetic one. In fact Rachael's entire purpose is to sleep with bounty hunters to dissuade them from killing more replicants, and extremely cynical use of what is supposed to be equivocated to a human being in the story.

I don't think it helps that due to the ubiquity of the Blade Runner adaptation I can only imagine Deckard as Harrison Ford, who is perhaps the least empathetic actor I've ever seen lol. Have any of you thought about this? I'd love to hear any input anyone has. Thanks a bunch!

 

[Montero]

Hello and welcome to Chrons. Really interesting questions - which I can't answer having only seen Bladerunner and not read the book. I am sure someone knowledgeable will be along fairly soon.