The Penultimate Truth Language Analysis

Superior Essays
The Power of Language and in The Penultimate Truth In his book The Penultimate Truth, Philip K. Dick has presented us with a world that is separated by the ground. The people who live underground are called “tankers” who construct robots called “leadies” to fight in a make believe World War III that is happening above the ground. However, these Tankers did not know that these leadies had actually served as the servants of the Yance-men who lived on the surface. The few on the ground kept the many under ground elaborately constructed lies, which were delivered on a daily basis through the public announcement system by the Protector known as “Yancy”. The power of Yancy’s words were not only advanced by his authority but also by the language of his writers Adams and …show more content…
Nothing is left of Detroit and as you know a good deal of war . . . But we have sacrificed no human life, the one commodity which we cannot, will not, relinquish. We shall endure this. With each passing day, we grow stronger, not weaker. You are stronger.” (Dick, 17) Yancy’s direct message to his people obscures the truth that they are manufacturing robots in order to serve the aristocrats instead of for fighting in the fabricated war. The series of speeches written by David Lantano for Yancy, are delivered on a daily basis to the tankers as a way to brainwash them by hiding the truth through the perpetuation of lies. (Dick, 70) The indirect way means that Philip K. Dick had the obscured truth had been through the disguising the words of others, such as the writer Joseph Adams and the listeners/tankers. For example, when he was bitterly working on his speech for Yancy, Joseph Adams said: ”Maybe I could get it through the ‘vac, to the sim and then on tape; I think it’d go that far. But never past Geneva. Because I wouldn’t be saying, in effect, ‘Come on, fellas; carry on.’ I’d be saying.” (Dick, 5) Joseph Adams conveys can hardly write

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    It is necessary to comprehend some of the historical circumstances to understand the whole issue. Detroit´s dependence on the automobile industry could seem to be the core of the city’s problems. However, there are many other aspects which cannot be omitted. For many years, the city has been dealing with bad leadership and racial unrest, which has its share on the gradual depopulation of the city. 1) Dependence on Automobile Industry Majority of the city’s decline can be traced to its high reliance on the automobile industry.…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He drives continuously around the lake, making up conversations with people who are not actually there. He thinks, “There was nothing to say. He could not talk about it and never would” (147). He tries to move past the war, but he feels as…

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Morris realizes what war is really like and the effect that it had on those who are fighting it. In this man versus man conflict, the title’s significance is that they pledge to another like they have to pledge to the different branches of the service. The author of this book if very accomplished, he was born July 2, 1982 and was the fifth child out of seven. His father died when he was young and when he got older he enrolled at Boston University before finishing his junior year of High School. He earned an M.A. in writing from Emerson University.…

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ngo Chi Diem Analysis

    • 844 Words
    • 4 Pages

    As fowler says, “I laugh at anyone who spends so much time writing about what doesn’t exist-mental concepts. ”(85) Fowler views York work as superfluous to the people of Vietnam and that they need to stop throwing their ideas on the people. While Pyle feels the exact opposite he thinks concepts like Harding are important to society. Pyle feels it is needed to believe there is something greater going on pass our understanding while Fowler has no interest in this type of thinking he believes in what he knows.…

    • 844 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Both Atlanta and Detroit have witnessed this decline and rebuilding. Financially both cities have struggled and seemed to have greater weak points, than strong ones, which aided their decline. The peak for both of these cities occurred during wars, although one was national and the other international, it gives to the effects war has on the economy and people’s lives, once the war ends. Although Atlanta has, a slightly smaller population when compared to Detroit, by approximately 200,000 people, officials have greater control on the occurrences in the city.…

    • 2415 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    “In the early 1940’s, Detroit was at its industrial zenith, leading the nation in economic escape from the Great Depression” (Sugrue 19). However, today Detroit does not carry the same legacy’s it once did. It wasn’t until after WWII that Detroit suffered this shift. In his book, “The Origins of the Urban Crisis”, historian Thomas Sugrue strives to give an explanation to this shift and find the answer to why Detroit has become the site of persistent racialized poverty and what exactly caused the urban crisis in post WWII Detroit.…

    • 1251 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Detroit Research Paper

    • 1146 Words
    • 5 Pages

    When one thinks of Detroit or Michigan in general, they automatically think of the musicians and sports teams that came from there; Madonna, Eminem, Kid Rock, The Tigers, The Lions, and The Red Wings. One assumes when someone talks about Detroit that they live there and give the person the utmost respect despite only visiting or living outside of the city. What caused Detroit's descent from a wealthy, vital city into one where "ruins" are common and the city is bankrupt? The lack of care and concern from the people who are in the charge of the city and its people. Despite all of these attractions, the city is still in ruins and is still in major debt.…

    • 1146 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Detroit Mayoral Election

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In the 2013 mayoral election for Detroit, MI, the citizens experienced in a close race {55%-45%} the victorious win of Michael E. Duggan over Benny N. Napoleon, to become the first white mayor to lead the city in four decades. The great city of Detroit has for long experienced much calamity that has in a sense permeated throughout every vein in Detroit, and is responsible for its decrepit semblance. Mayor Michael Edward Duggan has brought to the city an energy that has been much needed and deserved to those residents that dream of the return of the motor city they once knew. In the run for the mayor of Detroit, MI in 2013,…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jacob Tellas AP English Wang Restarted on 10/3/16 Ghosts With some knowledge of war, one can begin to appreciate Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”. Tim O’Brien is a veteran, as a result, there are many things he takes for granted and does not tell us, making us wonder if it is fact or fiction. America’s involvement in the Vietnam war resulted from internal domestic politics rather than from a national spirit. The soldiers were disembodied from the war, just like ghosts. O’Brien uses syntactic illusion to express the idea of ghosts thoroughly but indirectly, as to further convey the sinister nature of war.…

    • 1032 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Detroit Poem Meaning

    • 2024 Words
    • 9 Pages

    In “The Idea of Detroit” by Jim Gustafson, he describes Detroit in a way that some people may not be able to see when visiting or perhaps living in the city. Detroit is a significant industrialized city serving as a major hub for…

    • 2024 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As he pulls up to a fast food restaurant’s intercom, the reader expects the grand unveiling of the story to the unexpecting employee on the other side of the mic, yet no story ever leaves Bowker’s mouth. Bowker states that his story is “a good war story, he thought, but it was not a war for war stories, nor for talk of valor, and nobody in town wanted to know….They wanted good intentions and good deeds” (143). For this reason, Bowker never tells his story, as there is no captivated audience to listen. “There was nothing to say.…

    • 1161 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    New Urban Poverty

    • 1116 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The “New Urban Poverty” is what has developed as a result of work disappearing in urban areas. The book, More than Just Race, by William Julius Wilson, Professor of Social Policy at Harvard, argues that “the disappearance of work and the consequences of that disappearance for both social and cultural life are the central problems in the inner-city ghetto.” The new urban poverty that Wilson describes is comprised of years of data compiled that create for a better understanding of the injustice that exists in Detroit and other inner cities alike.…

    • 1116 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    By creating an open dialogue between stakeholders, we brought everyone to the table and found solutions to the issues plaguing our state. Education spending is at the highest levels in state history; over 275,000 private sector jobs have been created; and unemployment is down over six points since it peaked under Democrats. We also did it by implementing commonsense conservative policies. And I’m proud to say, Detroit is now poised to be a beacon of success for the whole country.…

    • 689 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Because Hooten showed that he has the ability to display both sides of the argument, his readers respect the effort that he put into researching about the language of war. He directly engages with his audience by stating that “At this point, you may be wondering, doesn’t this guy know that the war on terrorism is actually a war on terrorists?” (397). Also, he mentions that “Doesn’t he realize that this exercise in logic has nothing to do with the reality of reality?” (397).…

    • 1453 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Psychologically speaking, as humans, we are wired to think that we have the freedom to act and do based upon our own self judgment. For simplistic reasons, let’s assume that this “freedom” is analogous to free will which is a philosophical idea in which to act freely is to have multiple open futures and possibilities, or to be able to choose between many different choices. Determinism is the belief that every event (including action, choices, and decisions) is the inevitable result of a causal chain of events. In other words, a choice with an action (A) is the inevitable result of an earlier action of an earlier choice. This principle presents a problem for the concept of free will.…

    • 1265 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays