One of the first things that struck me was the importance of animals within the novel. In the first chapter, as Rick reveals his sheep is in fact a fraud, he explains,”You know how people are about not taking care of an animal; they consider it immoral and anti-empathic. I mean, technically it’s not a crime like it was right after W.W.T., but the feeling’s still there.” While animals as we see them now and in the past fill a largely consumerist role, where we use them for their hide and meat, the animals in Dick’s dystopian world are used to prove your existence as human. As Rick comes to understand and use in his bounty hunting, the main difference between androids and humans are humans’ ability to empathize. While on the surface, this seems to display a very activist notion of animal rights, it is clear through several passages that animals are still wielded as consumer products.
Rather than keeping animals solely out of empathy, animals seem to be related to social class. As Rick contends, “I don’t want a domestic pet. I want what I originally had, a large animal. A sheep, or if I can get the money, a cow or a steer or what you have, a horse.” Having an animal has less to do with ensuring the greater good for it and exercising empathy than it does in proving yourself to society. Not only do humans keep animals merely to convey that they are in fact capable of empathy and therefore human, but a larger stock is correlated with a greater social status. The majority of passages regarding animals have to do with their price, and the protagonist even buys an electric sheep in order to trick his neighbors into thinking he has the money for a real one. The fact that animal care is not given purely due to empathy, but rather the need to prove your empathetic nature completely disregards the point, thus entering us into an empathy paradox. While outwardly, the protagonist is showing empathy through his relationship with his sheep, the fact that it is electric negates this empathetic act completely. When Rick conveys his secret to his neighbor, he is met with the disappointed words, “you poor guy.” While this is itself an empathetic comment towards the protagonist’s struggles, coming from a man with several colts and therefore rich in empathy and money, it is also a pointed comment on the protagonist’s social class. This shows that even though the narrative is largely focused on empathy towards animals, this expressed empathy is actually as fraud as Rick’s sheep, since it is only used to measure social status and prove one’s worth as a human.
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