What Is Simultane Garson's Existence

Garson Poole was deeply disconcerted upon discovering the illusory nature of his existence. Poole was not human, as he had always assumed; instead, he was the product of human thought, an engineered vessel of circuits bound to the will of its creator. The details of his life, which had once seemed so concrete, were revealed to be falsehoods: his life’s purpose was dictated by an unknown entity and his reality was the vision of a detached artist. Realizing his condition, Poole felt compelled to dispose of his reality tape, allowing him “to experience everything. Simultaneously. To know the universe and its entirety.” The removal of this tape caused Garson to experience both euphoria and reality, and he was able to fabricate a vivid world that …show more content…
And in the passage, Dick utilizes them with their original interpretations intact in order to demonstrate Garson’s success in transcending human life. While in an extremely euphoric state, Garson made several references to heat. He claimed to “[feel] warmth” and—in a metaphorical sense—that “butter relaxed into liquid on his tongue.” The most compelling use of such symbols, however, comes from the line, “Opening his mouth he tried to bring forth words—a specific string of them out of the enormous mass of them brilliantly lighting his mind, scorching him with their utter meaning.” These statements are seemingly descriptions of his physical condition. However, upon deeper analysis, they come to symbolize the ecstasy occurring within Garson’s psyche. Garson is literally in the process of abandoning the mundaneness of humanity and is experiencing the entirety of his universe; the warmth he is describing is purely the physical manifestation of his transcendence.
The literary techniques authors employ have profound effects on the way reader’s digest and synthesize the content of a text. Phillip Dick, in his short story The Electric Ant, mobilized a plethora of stylistic devices to encrypt the details of his tale with deeper meaning. In Garson’s final passage, Dick used the setting, powerful diction, and contrasts and absurdities to imply that Garson was successful in his quest to be …show more content…
The passage is populated with emotionally intense verbs like; felt, lead, glowed, drowned, raced, lighting, scorching, relaxed, live, and wondered. The marriage of such words to the intricacies of Garson’s experiment grants the passage a euphoric atmosphere, and this was likely Dick’s intention. By creating a euphoric, otherworldly mood, Dick is able to express the sensory overload Garson was exposed to after his reality tape was removed. Additionally, this tone allows Dick to effectively hint to the reader that Garson experienced reality to the maximum