![]() ![]() Shakespeare violated many of the existing canons of the genre by shifting away from the uniformity of time and place while following the actions of the main hero, which made some critics perceive Othello as a novel. The formalist discussion of the story was typically focused on the politics, the subject of lies and betrayal, and on whether or not Othello could be considered a poetic work of art. In the 18th and 19th centuries, racism was never really perceived as a bad thing by the majority of the white reading audience, so the racist connotations of Othello were largely ignored in favor of emotion and drama. Until recently, the subject of racism was often ignored or not addressed as a part of the literature analysis. While not without merits, this effort also robbed the analysts of any perspectives outside of the immediate story, disconnected the writing from the author, and created a diluted picture of portrayed reality because of it. It was an attempt at making literature analysis into a rigorous academic discipline. Connotations of Racism and Formalist Denialįormalism was a popular style of literature analysis throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, which reviewed and presented the story outside of its philosophical, political, and geographical context, focusing on literary devices, tropes, and the overall plot of the story. After going through one murder after another, the hero discovers a newfound empathy for even the creatures perceived as “inferior,” which causes him to risk his life to rescue a frog, which turned out to be robotic in the end. This goes against what Rick Deckard has thought about the androids. As the story goes on, the Nexus-6 androids become increasingly more humanized, depicted to have motivations, thoughts, emotions, and a persistent will to live (Dick). The story begets the rhetorical question of whether life is determined by the capacity for emotion, the humanness of existence, or the capability for self-perception and conscience. They are remarkably human-like, to the point that it takes an elaborate test in order to determine whether a person is a human or an android. He kills his beloved Desdemona and then ends his own life, succumbing to his weaknesses as well as the influence of a corrupt society around them (Shakespeare).ĭo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is an exploratory tale, in which the main hero of the story struggles to find his own empathy and humanity, as he is set up to carry out a daunting task of killing off Nexus-6 androids (Dick). Instead, in many ways, Othello is the engineer of his own destruction. The hero is both similar and different to Greek tragedies in that he possesses a fatal flaw, but is not portrayed as a victim of circumstance and fate. Othello is a tragedy of a man who perceives himself as an “honorable murderer.” He tried to assimilate into a culture foreign to himself and pursue his love of a woman, only for him to fall to plots, schemes, machinations, as well as various racist innuendos and undertones that slowly warped his perception of himself, Desdemona, and the relationship between them. One is a poetic tragedy set in 16th century Venice, while the other is a science fiction novel set in the far future. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are two different stories, with centuries of evolution and development separating them. I believe that there will be a more equitable world in the future. Although it is difficult to achieve the absolute equity in the world, at least racism is no longer a problem in the world of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. ![]() It had caused numerous tragedies, and it definitely would cause more in the future. It looks like discrimination is always in humans’ culture. Othello as a powerful Moor, just as the lonely android Rick Deckard being treated differently in his world. ![]() ![]() By comparing this publication in 1968 to Shakespeare’s Othello, written in the 16th century from characters, plot, settings, and imagery, readers can understand that discrimination will lead to tragedy ends. Dick, in his science fiction novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, discusses the issue of AI in an imaginary world. Nowadays, with the invention of creative technology AI (artificial intelligence), a new form of discrimination-speciesism comes to the world. Sexism and racism are the two most common forms in human culture. It is a simple truth that individuals have preferences with regard to all creatures on this planet–including our fellow human beings. ![]()
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