A Schaanner Darkly Character Analysis

In 1977 the American novelist Phillip K. Dick published A Scanner Darkly, a semi-autobiographical story set in the then future of June 1994. Taking place in an anti-utopia Orange County, California, the novel is an all-embracing depiction of drug culture and drug use, both recreational and abusive. The main character and protagonist of the story is Bob Arctor, junkie and drug dealer, who happens to be living a parallel life as Agent Fred, a law enforcement agent assigned to bring down Arctor. In A Scanner Darkly, Phillip K Dick implies that technological advances such as the ubiquitous machines, exposed in the novel, are harmful to humanity because they create dependency, distraught sense of identity, and the loss of ones singularity. While …show more content…
Dick introduces the power of technology early in the novel when Donna, Arctor girlfriend, informs Arctor about his cephalochromoscope, “ Your cephalochromoscope that cost you nine hundred dollars, that you always turn on and play when you get home. It wouldn’t work. No colors and no ceph patterns, neither one” (34). Dick created the cephscope as an electronic gadget, which displays the user’s thoughts and brain patterns on a screen. After finding out the cephscope was broken, Arctor was furious because of his dependency on this gadget to bring him into a tranquil and pleasurable state of mind. The frantic thoughts of no longer possessing the cephscope and its amentias truly demonstrate the degree of dependency in which Arctor upholds. The protagonist also demonstrates dependency on the holo-tapes, “All I could ever do sometimes, he thought, is play the holo-tapes back, to remember” (Dick, 228). The holo-scanner is a portable device that was placed in Arctors house by the authorities so that holographic surveillance images could be acquired. The dependency on the holo-tapes is extremely important because it validates that without the holo-tapes Arctor would not be capable of remembering what has already happened. Dick verifies by revealing Arctor’s thoughts, “Burned out and destroyed, like me, unable to figure out what the fuck is happening” …show more content…
Self-identity is no longer self-identity; meaning derived from the self, but rather is an identity projected onto society by technology and in no way an accurate reflection of who someone truly is. Bell Laboratories invented the scramble suit for the purpose of masking ones identity by projecting, “every conceivable eye color, hair color, shape and type of nose, formation of teeth, configuration of facial bone structure at any nanosecond, and then switched to the next” (Dick, 21). Every undercover narcotic agent wore this suit. The significance of the scramble suit was to hide Agent Fred’s true identity and allow him to work in secrecy. This machine not only accomplished that but it also accomplished a distraught sense of identity. Dick reveals, “It was his closest claim to immortality” (21). The scramble suit allowed Arctor to become someone else, eventually leading to his misguided sense of identity in addition to the struggle of knowing who he really is. The suit is Dick’s way of commenting on the loss of identity directly associated with technology. Dick poses the questions, “What does a scanner see? I mean really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, see into me-into us-clearly or darkly?” (192). Directly commenting on the future integration of