Compare Mercer And Buster Friendly
Different, yet the Same
Wilbur Mercer and Buster Friendly’s purposes are to unify people. The people on Earth are surrounded by dust, fake animals, and radioactivity where there was once verdancy. The people on Mars are surrounded by rock fields, humanoid robots, and an almost uninhabitable, foreign environment. In Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Wilbur Mercer and Buster Friendly serve to offer entertainment and distract people from their dreary surroundings.
Mercer and Friendly share the goal of unifying people. They serve on different platforms but, in essence, do the same thing. Mercer, the godhead of a new spirituality, is an “archetypal entity” that allows people to feel a “fusion of their mentalities” (Dick 65, 22). Similarly, Friendly is a TV personality that hosts “unending” audio and video shows (69). Though Mercer is found to be an actor and Friendly is found to be an android, they both provide a diversion from the new form of life. …show more content…
The “empathy box” (21), a tool used for Mercerism, allows the user to experience the emotions of every other user. Mercerism lets people find unity in a universe that has been divided by destruction. Mercer, the being that appears through the empathy box, guides people to “[accept] everything” and realize that there is an inevitable future that they will eventually reach (212). The purpose of Mercerism is to distract people from the truth but simultaneously force them to accept the truth and feel content with their
Wilbur Mercer and Buster Friendly’s purposes are to unify people. The people on Earth are surrounded by dust, fake animals, and radioactivity where there was once verdancy. The people on Mars are surrounded by rock fields, humanoid robots, and an almost uninhabitable, foreign environment. In Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Wilbur Mercer and Buster Friendly serve to offer entertainment and distract people from their dreary surroundings.
Mercer and Friendly share the goal of unifying people. They serve on different platforms but, in essence, do the same thing. Mercer, the godhead of a new spirituality, is an “archetypal entity” that allows people to feel a “fusion of their mentalities” (Dick 65, 22). Similarly, Friendly is a TV personality that hosts “unending” audio and video shows (69). Though Mercer is found to be an actor and Friendly is found to be an android, they both provide a diversion from the new form of life. …show more content…
The “empathy box” (21), a tool used for Mercerism, allows the user to experience the emotions of every other user. Mercerism lets people find unity in a universe that has been divided by destruction. Mercer, the being that appears through the empathy box, guides people to “[accept] everything” and realize that there is an inevitable future that they will eventually reach (212). The purpose of Mercerism is to distract people from the truth but simultaneously force them to accept the truth and feel content with their