Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English

and American Studies

English Language and Literature

David Uhříček

The Theme of Twins in Works

of Philip K. Dick Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Filip Krajník, Ph.D.

2019

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,

using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. David Uhříček

I would like to thank my friends and family for their support and encouragement.

Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1

1. The Life of Philip K. Dick .................................................................................................. 6

2. Jane and the Dark-Haired Girl ...................................................................................... 17

2.1 Philip K. Dick’s Femme Fatale .......................................................................... 18

3. Twins in Philip K. Dick’s Fiction ................................................................................... 32

4. Twin Cosmogonies of VALIS and The Divine Invasion ............................................. 41

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 49

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 51

Summary .................................................................................................................................. 54

Resumé ...................................................................................................................................... 55

1

Introduction

During his life, Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) managed to achieve something unique. Not

only did he become a well-respected icon of the science fiction genre, whose literary

legacy is still relevant to this day, but his work has transcended the boundaries of this,

often scorned, literary genre, and has permeated into the mainstream popular culture, a

feat that is not very common among other sci-fi writers. Some of his novels and short

stories would endure the test of time to become popular radio, television, film and even

theatrical adaptations celebrated worldwide long after his death, be it large-scale

Hollywood productions such as Ridley Scott’s 1982 picture Blade Runner, Dick’s very

first venture to the silver screen, the 1990 Total Recall, or even the, much lesser known,

French adaptation Barjo (1993). These have become classics in their own right that not

only represent important milestones in the genre of science fiction, but in many ways

shaped the popular culture of their respective eras.

One thing that makes Philip K. Dick unique is his rather different, yet instantly

recognizable approach to the science fiction genre, especially when compared to writers

such as Stanisław Lem, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke, who are often

categorized as “hard” sci-fi for their more pronounced focus on the scientific aspects of

the genre, and their vast worlds filled with futuristic technology. Instead, Philip K. Dick

has become known for his distinct emphasis on strong characters, sometimes to the

detriment of the technological components typical of the genre. Although the scientific

element is still present, it is often used merely as a technical means of getting the

message across, while the emphasis of the story tends to lie on the more philosophical

and psychological matters at hand. The “Phildickian” universes include alternate

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timelines and realities, and are often built around dystopian or post-apocalyptic societies

and totalitarian governments. Dick’s protagonists undergo deep traumas; they are

ordinary people stricken with misfortune, often struggling with mental illnesses, who

found themselves alienated and rejected by the society. An individual is often stood

against a tyrannical and unjust system. It is the psychological transformation of his

characters that forms the centerpiece of Philip K. Dick’s fiction and makes the

characters, if not always relatable, extremely real to say the least.

When examining Philip K. Dick’s work, one can clearly identify its

fundamental, recurring themes. In the introduction to The Shifting Realities of Philip K.

Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings, Lawrence Sutin isolates these

themes into two simple questions – “what is real” and “what is human” – and describes

the majority of Philip K. Dick’s writing as a “quest to uncover the mysteries of [these]

two great themes” (Sutin xiii). The questions of reality, identity, existential anxieties

and the concepts of simulations, humanness, or fakeness; such themes can be found in

most of his best-selling novels, including The Man in the High Castle (1962), Do

Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), or A Scanner Darkly (1977), as well as his

mainstream novels and short-stories such as Confessions of a Crap Artist (1975).

In essence, the secondary literature that deals with Philip K. Dick is

predominantly concerned with the aforementioned themes. What is, however, often

overlooked is the autobiographical nature of the author’s fiction, since it is not always

immediately apparent how deeply his life is embedded in his stories. But even though

that the autobiographical qualities are present in a significant portion of his work, and

are highly relevant for the analysis of his books, they tend to be sidelined by readers and

scholars alike, and have not yet been documented in great detail.

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As such, the aim of this thesis is to explore one such autobiographical feature in

particular – the death of Philip K. Dick’s twin sister Jane, whose early death represents

a trauma which stayed with Dick until his death, and not only does it appear to have a

significant effect on the author’s personal life, but, more importantly, on his writing. In

Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Sutin writes that the loss of Jane is

“at the heart of the difficulties – the toppling, twisting universes, death-dealing wives,

desperate loves – that his fictional characters must overcome” (Sutin 19). Since the

remnants of this trauma are ever-present in Dick’s fiction, and thus crucial for

understanding his work, this thesis is meant to demonstrate the extent to which this

event influences his stories, characters, and writing in general, as well as document the

recurring theme of twins, twin-like characters and entities that appear in his work. It

analyzes the biographical nature of selected novels, and attempts to establish the link

between Jane and Dick’s female characters. In addition, the thesis explores how his

sister shaped his personal life, especially in the context of his significant others, and,

more importantly, draws parallels between his life and his fiction. The thesis recognizes

the abovementioned themes of reality and identity, but is not primarily concerned with

them, unless it is crucial in analyzing a particular work. As Jane’s death forms the very

identity of Philip K. Dick as a writer, such analysis is important in understanding Dick’s

inclination to portray his protagonists as weak, ordinary men contrasted with evil and

controlling women, and the author’s continual fictionalization of autobiographical

events that is somewhat atypical for the science fiction genre.

Since it is deemed relevant and necessary for understanding the bigger picture of

Philip K. Dick’s fiction, as well as important for the following chapters, the very first

chapter will cover Philip K. Dick’s life with a focus on his formative years, the death of

Jane itself, his marriages and romantic partners, as well as the so-called supernatural

4

events of “2-3-74”. This chapter is based primarily on Lawrence Sutin’s Divine

Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, which is the first ever written biography of Philip K.

Dick’s life. This extensive biography is greatly detailed and includes numerous

interviews, conducted by Sutin himself, with people who played a role in Dick’s life. It

provides a look behind the curtains and presents important context and background,

critical for the analysis of autobiographical elements of Dick’s work.

The second and third chapter will be dedicated to selected primary literature and

its analysis. The second chapter will deal with the idea of Jane being re-imagined as the

trope of a dark-haired girl, which keeps frequently occurring in the author’s fiction.

Firstly, the trope will be looked at from a more general standpoint, analyzing the said

trope as a rather common literary archetype. The trope is then further analyzed in depth

in the novels We Can Build You (1972), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and A

Scanner Darkly. The chapter’s primary focus is to demonstrate how exactly is the trope

employed as an integral component to Dick’s syncretic narratives. It also defines the

link between Dick’s female characters and their real-life counterparts, who served as an

inspiration. A substantial part of the chapter consults The Dark Haired Girl – a

collection of Philip K. Dick‘s speeches, essays, and personal letters, published in 1988.

The third chapter will be concerned with the novels Flow My Tears, the

Policeman Said (1974), Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965),

and Confessions of a Crap Artist. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the

representation of fictional twins and twin-like characters in said novels, and discuss the

way in which they are rooted in biographical foundations.

The final chapter will describe the events of “2-3-74” and analyze the books

VALIS (1981) and The Divine Invasion (1981). It attempts to answer the question of

whether a connection can be made between the twin realities of the “Phildickian”

5

universe, as depicted in the first two installments of the “VALIS trilogy”, and the death

of Jane. The chapter will briefly introduce Philip K. Dick’s personal philosophies, since

it is relevant for the analysis of the selected novels.

6

1. The Life of Philip K. Dick

Philip Kindred Dick was born on December 16, 1928 along with his twin sister, Jane

Charlotte Dick, shortly after their parents, Dorothy Kindred and Edgar Dick, had moved

from Washington D.C. to Chicago, Illinois. Philip was a blonde-haired boy while Jane

was “quieter and darker” (Sutin 11). The twins were born prematurely in an apartment

in Chicago, both underweight and starving. Not long after, in consequence of

malnutrition and an accident with hot water, Jane and Philip were to be taken to a near

hospital. Jane died on the way to get there, on January 26, 1929. She was buried in the

Fort Morgan cemetery in Colorado. This event would later shape Philip K. Dick’s life in

an unimaginable manner. Lawrence Sutin notes:

When Phil was still young, Dorothy tried to explain to him what had happened.

Twin sister Jane, of whom Phil had no conscious memory took vivid life within

the boy [...] Three decades later, Phil would confine to his third wife, Anne, that

“I heard about Jane a lot and it wasn’t good for me. I felt guilty – somehow I got

all the milk.” The trauma of Jane’s death remained the central event of Phil’s

psychic life. The torment extended throughout his life, manifesting itself in

difficult relations with women and a fascination with resolving dualist (twin-

poled) dilemmas – SF/mainstream, real/fake, human/android and [...] in the two-

source cosmology described in his masterwork Valis. (12)

In consequence of Jane’s death, the parents became overprotective of Philip and their

differences when it came to his upbringing would start to show. Eventually, the

marriage of Dorothy and Edgar started to crumble, ultimately resulting in a divorce in

7

1933. Apart from occasional visits, Philip K. Dick would be left fatherless and made

dependent on his mother, Dorothy, as well as other women. Dick was raised partially by

his aunt, Marion, and his grandmother. Even though he blamed Dorothy for Jane’s

death and was never able to forgive her, their tense relationship was not always one

made purely of anger and resentment, as she did play an important role in Philip K.

Dick’s life and often acted as his only support in difficult times. Their complicated

relationship, as Sutin believes, appears to be “mirrored in every love relationship Phil

ever had with a woman” (16).

Dick spent a large portion of his childhood on the move. He and Dorothy would

move between the Bay Area in San Francisco and Washington D.C., until finally

settling in Berkeley, California in 1938, where Dick attended the Hillside Berkeley

School and Oxford School and where he would remain for the majority of his life. The

thought of his sister, however, never left him. During his childhood years, he would

imagine Jane, “small with dark eyes and long dark hair” (Sutin 22), playing along

himself. The death of his sister, difficult mother-son relationship, and the absence of a

father figure made Dick’s formative years extremely challenging, and resulted in a

plethora of psychological issues. At first, Dick developed severe swallowing problems

followed by a numerous examples of anxieties, neuroses, symptoms of agoraphobia (the

fear of public environments), and attacks of vertigo, and had to undergo psychotherapy

from a very young age. In addition, his physical condition was not much better since he

suffered from asthma and was underweight for his age. As such, his condition would

often leave him disconnected from other children.

Philip K. Dick’s interest in art manifested from a very young age, be it through

drawing, listening to classical music, reading comic book strips, or through his very

own first attempts at writing in the form of short poems. In the early 1940s, some of his

8

earliest poems and stories would end up being published in the “Young Author’s Club”

column in the Berkeley Gazette – a local periodical. His first contact with science fiction

literature was through popular “pulp” magazines including a number of, often low

quality, science fiction short stories, which he later started collecting in large volumes

(Sutin 35). Such magazines were, at the time, the only way to read science fiction

literature and the only form of media that would publish any such literature. In August

1943, Dick and his friend, Pat Flannery, released a self-published newspaper called The

Truth, which would include some of Dick’s writings. At the age of fourteen, he finished

his very first novel called Return to Lilliput, based on of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s

Travels.

Dick started working while at high school, being employed by his friend Herb

Hollis, who would become a highly influential person in his life. He worked as a clerk

in a shop with electronics called University Radio, and later at Art Music, a local record

store (Sutin 50). Dick’s yearning to separate himself from his mother was very strong

and would eventually lead him to move out of their shared household. He relocated

himself in the autumn of 1947, against his mother’s will. The nineteen-year-old Dick

then attempted to live on his own for several years and at various places, notably among

a group of young local artists. Two years after finishing high school, despite his

resentment of the academic environment, Dick enrolled in classes of zoology, history,

philosophy, and German literature in the University of California at Berkeley, where he

studied for three months (Sutin 62). Most likely due to his still prevalent agoraphobia

and persisting attacks of vertigo, he was forced to withdraw from the university for

good.

In 1948, Dick married for the first time. His marriage with Jeanette Marlin, a

blond-haired girl several years older than Dick, who happened to be a customer at the

9

store he was working at, would only last 6 months. It was a marriage, as Sutin mentions,

about which Dick “seldom spoke for the rest of his life” (Sutin 59). Two years after his

first divorce, Dick married Kleo Apostlides, whom he met at Art Music. Their marriage

would last eight years. Kleo was nineteen years old and coming from a Greek

background. At that time, she studied at the University of California. Kleo was “dark-

haired, with strong features, a rounded figure, and a pleasant laugh [...] and was

intensely curious and intellectual” (Sutin 67). Thanks to the marriage and Kleo’s

vehement support, Dick found himself in a good enough financial situation that allowed

him to pursue the career of a full-time writer.

During this period, Dick would continue to better himself as a writer, attempting

to write predominantly mainstream pieces, one of them being the novel Gather

Yourselves Together, published posthumously in 1994. However, thanks to the help of

Anthony Boucher, an important figure in the local science fiction scene and editor of a

fantasy and sci-fi magazine, Philip K. Dick published and sold his first ever science

fiction short story titled “Roog” (1953). During the post-war upsurge of science fiction,

fantasy, and other forms of escapist literature, along with the rising popularity of pulp

magazines, Dick was able to sell his short stories through the magazines. Even though

he managed to make a living by writing alone, Dick and Kleo were forced to live on the

verge of poverty, which made Dick feel insecure and anxious. By 1954, he had

published over fifty short stories; significant portion of them being written over night

simply to make ends meet. Sutin notes:

For Phil, poverty was far more difficult [than for Kleo]. Not that he craved

luxuries. Poverty was a humiliation, the stigma of his inability – and

unwilligness – to act the part of a wage-earning American male. Phil knew that

his vocation was as a writer, but knew also that his writing allowed him to hide

10

from the world. (78)

Even though that Dick continued writing science fiction and fantasy, the thought of

breaking into mainstream literature remained, despite him being largely unsuccessful on

that front.

In November 1952, Philip K. Dick’s aunt Marion, a mother of fraternal twins,

died after a series of unsuccessful treatments of her schizophrenic episodes. Sutin

indicates that “as with Jane’s death, the seriousness of Marion’s condition was not

recognized” (80). This unfortunate turn of events had a profound effect on Dick and

escalated the relationship with his mother even further, since he blamed Dorothy and

her questionable choices of medication for this death, too.

During the era of the Red Scare and the McCarthyist America, Dick and Kleo

found themselves under FBI investigation and surveillance for possible ties to the

Communist Party. They were also asked by the FBI to monitor the Berkeley area and

the University of California for potential left-wing extremism, but chose to decline the

offer. Instead, one of the FBI agents became close friends with Dick and Kleo and

taught Dick to drive.

After seven years of being with Kleo, Philip K. Dick’s second marriage suffered.

In 1957, Dick had an extramarital affair with a married dark-haired woman with

children. This affair, however, would not mean the end between Dick and Kleo and

their marriage would endure, at least for a little longer.

After Kleo and Dick decided to move to the countryside of Pont Reyes Station in

Marin County, a “remote little dairy town set just north of Pont Reyes” (Sutin 96), in

September 1958, Dick continued to work on his mainstream novels almost exclusively.

Since, as Sutin writes, in the years 1956-57, “he abandoned [sci-fi] altogether” (86).

Among the small local community, Dick met Anne Williams Rubenson, a thirty one

11

year old mother of three, whose husband had passed away earlier that year. Dick

quickly fell in love with her and started visiting her house several times a week.

Eventually, he decided to end his marriage with Kleo and married Anne in March 1959

in Ensenada, Mexico. Nonetheless, Dick did remain on friendly terms with Kleo for

years after. He would then move to Anne’s house and helped to raise Anne’s three

daughters. In February 1960, Laura Archer Dick, Dick’s first daughter, was born. Upon

seeing Laura for the first time, Dick proclaimed that “now my sister is made up for”

(Sutin 104).

During his time in Marin County, Dick would continue to pursue the mainstream

literature dream, but any such attempts remained unsuccessful. The sole exception being

Confessions of a Crap Artist, a semi-biographical novel inspired by Dick’s life in Marin

County and his relationship with Anne, which deals predominantly with love and

infidelity. According to Sutin, it is “the best mainstream novel Phil ever wrote” and the

first of his works to employ “multiple narrative viewpoints” (104-105). Even so,

Confessions was not published until 1975 due to the discontent of Dick’s publishers. To

this day, the novel is considered Dick’s only truly successful mainstream piece of

fiction and an important milestone of his work. Nevertheless, after a nervous breakdown

due to the growing jadedness with the science fiction scene and with his publishers,

Dick stopped writing altogether, and instead helped with his wife’s jewelry business.

In 1960, Anne became pregnant again, but ultimately decided to get an abortion,

despite Dick’s protests. Dick eventually returned to writing and in 1961 finished what is

widely regarded as one of his pivotal works. The Man in the High Castle was published

the following year. This novel is set in an alternate reality, where the forces of the Third

Reich and the Japanese Empire won the Second World War and consequently ruled

over the United States of America. In the process of writing, Dick used his extensive

12

knowledge of Nazi Germany, and drew influences from I Ching, an ancient Chinese

religious text, which is incorporated into the story itself, as well as Ward Moore’s

alternative history novel Bring the Jubilee (1953). In 1962, The Man in the High Castle

won the Hugo Award – “the highest SF honor” of that period (Sutin 118). To this day,

the prize is given annually to the best fantasy and science fiction titles of the previous

year. The Man in the High Castle is often viewed as Dick’s breakthrough novel, and the

first one to receive such accolades.

However, Dick’s next novel titled Martian Time-Slip, written 1962 and released

two years later, was received with much less enthusiasm. Dick reminiscences of this

period:

With High Castle and Martian Time-Slip, I thought I had bridged the gap

between the experimental mainstream novel and science fiction. Suddenly I’d

found a way to do everything I wanted to do as a writer. I had in mind a whole

series of books, a vision of new kind of science fiction progressing from those

two novels. Then Time Slip [Dick most likely misremembered and meant the

novel We Can Build You] was rejected by Putnam and every other hardcover

publisher we sent it too. (Sutin 117)

In the 1960s, Dick wrote numerous short stories and novels, among them being some of

his most iconic works including, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Do

Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Dr. Bloodmoney or Ubik (1969). However, the

1960s would also mark the start of Dick’s darkest years. His mental health declined, the

use of amphetamines as a writing tool was at its high point, his agoraphobic fits

returned, and his second marriage would fall apart for a variety of reasons. Apart from

the difficult financial situation, the relationship of Dick and Anne would become violent

and fights between the two of them were commonplace. Dick would often retreat to his

13

mother’s house in Berkeley to seek solace. Fights and tensions continued until 1965,

when the marriage finally ended with a divorce, and Dick left Anne and the children.

After a brief relationship with Grania Davidson, a Mexican science fiction

writer, and a short romance with Kirsten Nelson, a Norwegian immigrant, Dick met

Nancy Hackett, a “shy, attractive young woman with long dark hair” (Sutin 143), who,

in July 1966, became his fourth wife. Isolde Freya, Dick’s second daughter, was born

eight months later. The novel The Transmitigation of Timothy Archer (1982), being the

last installment of the “VALIS trilogy”, and Counter Clock-Work (1966) are heavily

inspired by this period. Then, in September 1970 following Nancy’s affair with a

neighbour, she and Isolde abandoned Dick.

After Nancy’s departure, Dick opened the doors of his house in Santa Venetia to

anyone; from personal friends to local drug dealers. As Sutin describes:

Music [was] always going––from Mozart to the Grateful Dead. Young drifters

and dealers passing through free and easy, which was fine since Phil was

generous with his drugs and his money. He felt safer with strangers around;

trusting strangers, he believed, was very antischizophrenic. (169)

The environment of the “Hermit House” (Sutin 171) would later inspire the novel A

Scanner Darkly, published in 1977. Dick’s anxieties about being spied by the

authorities are undoubtedly manifested in the novel. During this time, Dick formed

relationships with a number of women, including one J’Ann Forgue, a young,

homosexual couple, and Kathy Demuelle – a seventeen-year-old girl with dark hair

(Sutin 172). During this period, Dick was also admitted to psychiatric wards and his

mental health continued to deteriorate due to his ongoing drug abuse. He developed an

omnipresent sense of paranoia, fearing the Communists, CIA, FBI, and the IRS. These

anxieties were fueled further after a house break-in which happened in 1971.

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In 1972, Dick was invited to a science fiction convention in Vancouver, Canada,

where he meant to deliver his speech “The Android and the Human”. Dick originally

planned to go with Kathy, whom he considered his girlfriend. However, since she was

supposedly afraid of flying, she instead traded the plane ticket for money, leaving Dick

in a state of emotional turmoil. After getting acquainted with local fans of his, Andrea

and Susan, Dick decided to stay in Vancouver indefinitely. Sutin remarks that he

“flirted with virtually every women who came his way” and that the “hallmark of [his]

intensity during this period was his capacity to fall in and out of love at a vertiginous

rate” (191). One of such short-lived romances was Jamis, whom Dick described in a

personal letter to a friend as a “pretty little person, with [...] long black hair and jeans,

skinny and intense, animated, brilliant, mystical, poised between leaping into absolute

life and absolute nonbeing [...] her black eyes shine like living stones” (Girl 18).

In the aftermath of the convention, Dick tried to take his own life in an empty

Vancouver apartment on March 23 by overdosing on sedatives. After spending three

weeks in a local rehabilitation institute for drug addicts, Dick returned to California to

live with Linda Levy, a young dark-haired woman, and another science fiction writer

called Tim Powers.

In the summer of 1972, Dick met Tessa Busby, an eighteen-year-old student,

who would become his fifth wife soon after. Despite marital tensions and cases of

domestic violence, they remained together until 1976. In 1973 their son Christopher

was born, and in September of the same year, United Artists expressed an interest in

adapting Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into a full-length film.

In February 1974, Philip K. Dick experienced the first in a series of the events

later referred to as “2-3-74”, also known as the “Divine Invasions” or the “Pink Light

Beams”. These so-called supernatural experiences were supposedly triggered after Dick

15

received anesthetics for a wisdom tooth removal. When awaiting a supply of prescribed

medicine later on the same day, Dick believed his mind was invaded by an otherwordly,

divine entity, upon opening his door to a dark-haired woman with large dark eyes,

wearing a necklace with a symbol of the early Christians. In the course of the following

weeks, Dick claimed that he received additional visions. These events resulted in Dick

embarking on a quest for answers. They are the centerpiece of his later phase of

biographical fiction, specifically the novels VALIS (originally titled Radio Free

Albemuth), The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, as well as

the sole purpose of Exegesis (published posthumously in 2011) an extensive collection

of Dick’s religious and philosophical writings and hypotheses, attempting to decode his

paranormal experiences. As Sutin comments:

To comprehend as best he could, Phil searched through the Britannica, the

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, works on Orphic, Gnostic, Zoroastrian, and

Buddhist thought, The New Testament Decoded, studies on bicameral brain

research – no philosopher’s stone was left unturned. (237)

One of Dick’s many plausible theories being that the supernatural entity might have

been connected to Jane. As a result of these experiences, Dick claimed to have received

information from unknown sources. Allegedly, one such “beam” told Dick that his son

had an “undetected birth defect and must be taken to the doctor at once” (Sutin 225).

Christopher was then taken to a hospital and Dick’s vision was indeed confirmed – his

son was diagnosed with an inguinal hernia and a successful surgery was performed, thus

saving Christopher’s life.

During this time, Dick had developed feelings for another woman named Doris

Sauter, who was later diagnosed with cancer and Dick felt that he was obliged to help

her. In 1976, following a fight, Tessa decided to take their son Christopher and left Dick

16

for good. Consequently, Dick attempted to commit suicide one more time, and was

hospitalized in the Orange County Medical Centre and later transferred to a psychiatric

ward. Dick and Tessa’s marriage ended in 1977 and Dick would move to an apartment

with Doris. The last person to be in a romantic relationship with Dick was Joan, a thirty-

two-year-old psychiatric worker, who briefly lived with Dick in Sonoma, California.

Joan would also accompany Dick to a science fiction festival in Metz, France. In

August 1978, Dick’s mother Dorothy died.

In 1981, the cast of Blade Runner was revealed, and the production of the film

started later that year. At first, Dick strongly disliked the initial draft of the script

written by Hampton Fancher, but ultimately enjoyed the hopeful prospects of fame.

After much negotiation, he did, however, agree to sell the rights for the film

novelization and praised the “techno-noir beauty of the film” (Sutin 286).

On February 18, Dick was found unconscious on the floor of his apartment, after

a stroke. He was hospitalized, but a series of further strokes followed. He died on March

2, 1982, at the age of fifty-three, three months before the offical premiere of Blade

Runner. Philip K. Dick is buried in Fort Morgan, Colorado, alongside his twin sister

Jane.

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2. Jane and the Dark-Haired Girl

The motif of the dark-haired girl is a recurring trope in Philip K. Dick’s fiction, and

often serves as a model for female characters found across his oeuvre. Dick’s use of this

particular trope provides an insight into his concepts of femininity, love, or sexual

attraction, and represents unfiltered depictions of many of his real-life partners. In

addition, the actual characteristics of the dark-haired girl in his works can be interpreted

as a fictional re-imagination of Jane.

Even though this motif is deeply rooted in Dick’s personal life and the trauma of

Jane’s death, Dick is not the first author to utilize extensively this theme in his writing,

but merely a part of a rich tradition of Anglo-American literature. Similar archetypes

can be found in literature written long before Dick’s time, notably in the works of

writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, as well as in pieces of Victorian

literature (Carpenter 253). In Theory of Literature, René Wellek and Austin Warren

comment on the existence of such literary tropes:

There are character-typologies, party literary tradition, partly folk-anthropology,

which are used by novelists. In nineteenth-century English and American fiction,

one finds brunettes, male and female [...] and blondes. The blonde is the home-

maker, unexciting but steady and sweet. The brunette – passionate, violent,

mysterious, alluring, and untrustworthy – gathers up the characteristics of the

Oriental, the Jewish, the Spanish, and the Italian characteristics as seen from the

point of view of the “Anglo-Saxon” [...] Whatever the ultimate social or

anthropological basis for literary character-types such as the blonde heroine and

18

the brunette, the affective patterns can both be made out from the novels without

documentary aid, and they have, commonly, literary-historical ancestries and

lines. (228)

This juxtaposition of light and dark as a symbolic literary contrast between good and

evil, innocence and experience, purity and sin, or life and death, has been used

universally for a long time. However, according to Frederic I. Carpenter, it was not until

1840 that the contrast of “blondness and darkness [came] to connote distinct types of

character” and was “continually emphasized by the authors until their symbolic

intention [became] unmistakable” (253-54). The archetypes of blondness and darkness,

along with the “theme of the blonde and dark ladies” (Carpenter 258), are omnipresent

in the novels of Hawthorne and Melville. Whereas the fair-haired maidens embodied the

traits of the Puritan ideal – “the pure and innocent maiden” – dark hair suggested a

“woman of passion and experience” (Carpenter 253).

Nonetheless, as Filip Krajník argues in “The Phantom of the Dark-Haired Girl in

Philip K. Dick’s Life and Fiction”, the link between the colonial writers and Dick’s

fiction is not as clear as it may appear, despite its obvious similarities. Dick’s use of this

trope is, instead, rooted firmly in the author’s life and the motif of the dark-haired girl

primarily operates on a “strong personal dimension, and is based on empirical

experience and authentic feelings and desires”, rather than being just a part of the

Anglo-American literary legacy (262, translation mine).

2.1 Philip K. Dick’s Femme Fatale

When it comes to Philip K. Dick’s lifelong search for the ideal romantic partner, one

can identify an interesting phenomenon – that is Dick’s self-appointed role of a

protector. In a significant number of his relationships, Dick viewed himself as someone

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who must look after a vulnerable (usually dark-haired) woman. In a personal journal

from 1971, Dick’s stepfather Joseph Hudner describes this as a “pattern of believing

[Dick] can ‘save’ women. He can’t help himself; so he can help her” (Sutin 175). This

is evidenced in many of Dick’s non-fictional writings where he describes his partners as

“frail and lost [...] poised on the brink of nonbeing and silence” (Girl 12) or “self-

conscious [...] fragile and brittle” (Girl 32). This caretaker mindset can be attributed to

the trauma of Jane’s death that was projected into Dick’s subconsciousness. Kirsten

Nelson, one of Philip K. Dick’s female friends, commented on their relationship: “I

don’t know that he exactly fell in love with me so much as he kind of adopted me. I

think he cast me in the role of his dead sister. He felt he had to watch out for me” (Sutin

143).

But Dick was not only fixated on this female ideal of the dark-haired woman in

his personal life, it also heavily manifested in his fiction. Sutin links the dark-haired girl

motif with Dick’s childhood fantasies of Jane and describes the motif as the author’s

“anima and obsession – that guided him persistently in his choice of wives and lovers

and in his depiction of the ambiguous (fiercely brave/wayward evil) heroines that

appear in so many of his novels” (22). The motif itself represents a certain set of

characteristics that becomes typical of Dick’s representation of female characters, and

hence makes them instantly recognizable. Those shared characteristics can be traced

across most of his novels and short stories. In fact, Dick himself admitted that

throughout his oeuvre, he unapologetically and, perhaps unintentionally, continued to

depict the same woman repeatedly.

The dark-haired characters very clearly correspond with Dick’s imaginatory

notions of Jane. The fictional version of his sister was described as “small, with dark

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eyes and long dark hair. She was also very gutsy, always daring Phil to do things he was

afraid of, helping him to get into trouble” (Sutin 22).

The femme fatale of Philip K. Dick’s fiction tends to match the author’s

childhood projections. It is a young woman, usually in her early twenties, with “long

dark hair and large dark eyes”, and can be described as “mysterious, almost mythical,

with intense erotic energy” (Krajník 262, translation mine), not completely unlike the

dark ladies of Hawthorne and Melville. The common denominator between these

characters is that they, in most cases, inevitably induce the protagonist’s downfall. The

relationship between the male protagonist and the dark-haired women is often crucial in

understanding Dick's narrative. What may appear as a simple recurring motif becomes

an integral piece of the puzzle of the story itself. Patricia S.Warrick notes:

Contrary to much science fiction written in the fifties and sixties, Dick’s work

gives substantial attention to the relationships of women and men – relationships

that are always troubled. Characters never fall in love, marry, and live happily

ever after. Instead they grate on each other. (19)

The dark-haired woman in both fiction and in the author’s life represents “the

ground-source of the Real” (Sutin 100). It is her who is in charge of the world. At the

very moment the protagonists meet the dark-haired character, their reality is shattered

and invaded by the mere presence of such woman. Consequently, the heroes are slowly

seduced and trapped in the schemes of the dark-haired girls, and it is the femme fatale

who starts influencing the protagonist’s actions in a significant manner. As Holliday

comments:

When Dick represents women, if they are not essentially irrelevant or reactive,

they figure as integral components of the conspiracy webs in which the main

characters are netted. The one exception is The Transmigration of Timothy

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Archer, where the main narrator is a woman who makes all the observations.

(280)

The relationship of the protagonist and the dark-haired girl is usually a form of

one-sided love that mirrors the overbearing and overprotective role which Dick often

played in his relationships, especially those that followed the dissolution of his fourth

marriage. Dick’s femmes fatales are portrayed as scheming, mysterious, destructive, or

plain evil, and they often perform an antagonistic role. It is as if Dick poured his

frustrations and negativity with their real-life counterparts into their creation, which can

be described as a “cruel dismissal of his ex-wives” (Girl xiii). As such, Dick’s female

characters are sometimes criticized for being one-dimensional or predictable. Dick

himself acknowledged that they are either “romanticized, or vilified” (Krajník 260,

translation mine). He believed that his “depiction of females has been inadequate and

even somewhat vicious” (Sutin 277). Dick mentioned this issue in a letter to one of his

editors: “I tend to take it for granted in a novel that a man’s wife is not going to help

him; she’s going to be giving him a bad time, working against him. And the smarter she

is, the more likely she’s up to something” (Sutin 109). Sutin believes that the origin of

this “evil woman problem” is Dick’s persistent hatred for his mother, Dorothy (109).

However, it is much more plausible for it to be a combination of Jane’s death, Dick’s

complicated relationship with Dorothy, and his short-lived marriages.

Set in 1982 on the Pacific Coast, We Can Build You (w. 1962, p. 1972) is one of Dick’s

least known and least popular novels. It is an “odd SF/mainstream blend” (Sutin 299),

continuing the trend of Philip K. Dick’s attempts at combining elements of both of the

worlds. Nonetheless, the novel is an important part of Dick’s oeuvre and represents his

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“most intense exploration of his ‘dark-haired girl’ obsession” (Sutin 299). It is also the

first in a series of novels that incorporate the android theme.

Louis Rosen, the protagonist of the novel, is a typical “Phildickian” hero. He is

an ordinary man who is caught in series of events that are beyond his comprehension,

and whose obsessive love ultimately leads to his defeat. In order to revive their small

business, Louis and his business partner, Maury Rock, decide to start building and

selling simulacra – artificial, yet in many respects human-like, reproductions of actual

historical figures.

In contrast to Sutin, Rebecca A. Umland considers We Can Build You to be a

purely mainstream novel, since “there is no real attempt at an adequate explanation of

the creation of the simulacra” (128). The real focus of the novel, in fact, lies in the

relationship of Louis and Rock’s daughter, Pris, and Dick uses the simulacrum theme

only “as a convenient, if contrived, manner of forwarding the love triangle of

Pris/Louis/Barrows” (Umland 128).

Pris Frauenzimmer is a daughter of Louise’s friend and a business partner

Maury. She is an 18-year-old schizophrenic, with a “heart-shaped face [...] black hair,

and due to her odd make-up eyes outlined in black, a Harlequin effect”, described to

have a “doll-like” appearance, and “emasculating” quality (Build 13). She is released

from a mental health institution shortly before the events of the novel. Pris

Frauenzimmer represents a quintessential dark-haired girl; her schizoid personality

makes her seductive, manipulative, and destructive, but attractive at the same time. Dick

commented that, in the novel, “an android [...] which has true human qualities [is]

contrasted to a human (Pris) who is robot-like” (Girl 170). Despite Pris’s obvious lack

of humanity, she fascinates Louis from the very moment they meet. Against all

rationale, Louis falls in love with her; though he “recognizes her deficiencies, yet to him

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she remains irresistible” (Umland 135). This “love”, however, remains entirely

unreciprocated throughout the story and turns into an unfounded, one-sided obsession

that is in parallel with Dick’s fascination for dark-haired girls. As the novel progresses,

Louis’s whole existence is subordinated to that of Pris; he believes that he simply

cannot exist without her. To him, Pris is “both life itself – and anti-life” as well as “the

spirit of existence” (Build 85). Yet, they fail to connect “on a emotional and on a sexual

level” (Rickman 149). Pris is simply toying with Louis the entire time, including an

“aborted love scene” in Chapter 10, during which Louis is ridiculed by Pris (Umland

135). Though Louis eventually realizes that he is “devoted to worshipping Pris as if she

were a goddess” and says that he has “projected her archetype onto the universe; I see

nothing but her, everything else to me is unreal”, this does not stop him in his irrational

pursuit (Build 127).

After Louis and Maury attempt to sell their simulacra to a Seattle businessman

Sam Burrows, Pris flees to Burrows and a love triangle is born. Louis then becomes

furious, and attempts to execute a revenge plan, admitting that “the loss of Pris had

driven [him] insane” (Build 97). He decides to murder either Barrows, Pris, or himself,

yet fails to do any of those things.

In her essay “Unrequited Love in We Can Build You”, Rebecca A. Umland

notes:

The general psychological profile of Louis Rosen’s “love” for Pris, her treatment

of him, and the (non)resolution of this dilemma is modeled on the medieval

courtly paradigm. Louis’s love is obsessive, irrational, unrequited, likened to a

mental disease, and it involves a competitive triangle (at least in Louis’s mind)

with Sam Barrows. (128)

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This paradigm of unrequited love “runs contrary to reason and good sense” and causes

“grief and pain to the lover, whether he is a medieval knight or a twentieth-century

organ salesman” (Umland 128–30).

In executing his scheme to win Pris back, Louis experiences a mind-altering

hallucination, in which he fantasizes about her. This vision acts as a climax of his

obsessive love (Umland 135). He is then admittied to a psychological clinic, diagnosed

as schizophrenic, and undergoes a treatment by hallucinogenic drugs. This results in

more dream-like states in which Louis is happily married to Pris with a son. Louis is

eventually released from the clinic, while Pris stays. Their love remains unresolved as

they become separated for good.

In the essay “The Evolution of a Vital Love”, Philip K. Dick comments on the

conception of Pris:

In reading my novel We Can Build You [...] I can’t for the life of me figure out if

the chick Pris Frauenzimmer – the major figure of the piece – is someone I

actually knew or someone I made up. The novelist has successfully done his

verbal magic on himself; he can’t tell if it’s reality or fiction [...] More than

anyone she resembles my ex-wife Nancy and I suppose if Pris is based on

anyone she’s based on Nancy, but unfortunately for that theory I wrote the novel

before I met Nancy. What emerges in this theory: I dreamed up Pris out of my

head and then fell in love with Nancy because she was so much like Pris.

(Girl 169)

Just like Louis Rosen in the novel, Dick himself was obsessively attracted to this

specific set of attributes, embodied by the dark-haired girl archetype. Dick then

continues:

25

Basically I regard Pris as a hateful person, sick and schizoid, a tyrant. I am

repelled and attracted, the worst kind of bond. She is a typical anima figure,

uttering opinions, without emotional warmth, domineering, castrating,

intellectual, original and brilliant. (Girl 169)

Despite Dick’s later account, it is not just Nancy who resembles Pris. Instead, Pris

appears to be linked with Dick’s third wife, Anne. In 1960, exactly a year before We

Can Build You was written, Anne decided to get an abortion against Dick’s protests.

Anne herself recalls:

It must have been extremely disturbing to him, looking back now and realizing

that We Can Build You is about that experience and look at the woman [Pris] in

that novel. Demonic, right? [...] In the novel, Pris kills a little robot with her high

heel. I think the abortion may have brought back his awful birth experience with

his sister dying. (Sutin 108)

Sutin agrees that We Can Build You “includes a naked psychological account of Phil’s

enduring love – and poisonous hatred – for his wife (108). In addition, the character of

Pris Frauenzimmer acts as a precursor to both Rachel Rosen and the revised version of

Pris appearing in Dick’s acclaimed novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, as

well as many such characters thereafter. As Dick indicates: “I went on writing novel

after novel with Pris-like women in them” (Girl 170).

As opposed to We Can Build You, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) is one

of Dick’s pivotal and universally celebrated works. The novel represents a more

complete and improved variation on the android theme and, according to Gregg

Rickman, can be in many ways read as an unofficial sequel to We Can Build You since

the “two books can, in fact, be thought of almost as twins” (144). The character of Pris

26

makes a return, along with another female android named Rachel Rosen. Both Pris and

Rachel are essentially slightly altered and embellished versions of the dark-haired girl

archetype as seen in We Can Build You.

The protagonist of the novel is Rick Deckard – a human bounty hunter whose

job is to “retire” unwanted androids. Although Deckard is a married man, the

relationship between him and his wife Iran is portrayed as dull and unemotional,

suspiciously resembling the final stages of Philip K. Dick’s fourth marriage with Nancy,

by whom Iran is inspired (Sutin 307). At the beginning of the novel, Deckard is tasked

with killing a group of six androids who escaped from a Mars colony. In order to track

the rogue group, Deckard is then sent to the Rosen Associaction (an homage to Louis

Rosen), a manufacturer of androids, where he encounters Rachel Rosen. Rachel

eventually seduces Deckard under the premise of helping him. Though she claims that

her love is real (as opposed to the non-relationship of Louis and Pris in We Can Build

You), she later reveals that she is, in fact, designed to sleep with bounty hunters like

Deckard and that another android on the run, Pris, is her exact copy.

Do Androids Dream serves as a prime example of the dark-haired girl motif

functioning as an integral part of the underlying dichotomy of the novel, in this case

human versus android. In the novel, the only thing that distinguishes humans from

androids is the former’s ability to empathize with other beings. As such, empathy –

equated to humanity – becomes the fundamental theme of the novel. A whole cult-like

religion called Mercerism revolves around creating empathetic bond, and the Voight-

Kampff test is designed to measure empathy by asking the recipient questions meant to

generate empathetic response. When employing this figurative scale of empathy (with

the human and the android being opposite extremes), one can analyze the values of the

individual characters.

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Deckard’s empathy is demonstrated in his connection with animals, which are

treasured in the world of the novel. This link is meant to signalize the bounty hunter’s

humanity, in spite of his rather ruthless job. However, Vinci argues that Deckard's

alleged love for animals is “based primarily upon his desire to fulfill prescribed

normative behaviours” (11). Nevertheless, Deckard’s goal is to acquire, and provide for,

a living, non-artificial animal.

On the opposite side of the scale are Rachael and Pris, the two dark-haired

androids of the book. The dark-haired girl archetype naturally predisposes them to a

lack of empathy, and thus lack of humanity, as they both share the archetype’s

characteristic attributes. However, the one instance in which Rachel does express

empathy is for Pris – her identical android twin. In Chapter 16, she explains to Deckard:

“You know what I have? Toward that Pris android?”

“Empathy,” he said.

“Something like that. Identification; there goes I. My God; maybe that’s what’ll

happen. In the confusion you’ll retire me, not her [...] I never felt this way

before.” (Androids 85)

Deckard completely disregards her empathy by comparing it to that of an ant, not a

human:

“Ants don’t feel like that,” he said, “and they’re physically identical.”

“Ants. They don’t feel period.”

“Identical human twins. They don’t –“

“But they identify with each other; I understand they have an empathic, special

bond.” (Androids 85)

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It is as if Dick made a clear distinction between simple empathy in its traditional sense

and Rachel’s twin-like connection with Pris, analogous to the author’s everlasting

attachment to his sister.

Similarly to We Can Build You, Pris (and Rachel, for the matter) is notable for

her doll-like appearance – “a small young-looking girl with dark hair and large black

eyes” (Androids 102). More importantly, she is “cold, cruel, and incapable of human

compassion” (Krajník 275, translation mine). Both characters perform an antagonistic

role: Rachel’s aim is to seduce and manipulate Deckard into breaking his contract and

thus saving the fugitive androids; meanwhile, Pris establishes a fraudulent relationship

with J.R. Isidore, a mentally disabled individual, when she abuses his trust, kindness,

and empathy for all things in order to use him for the survival of the android group. Vint

remarks that the character of J.R. Isidore is “often cited as Dick’s archetypal figure of

empathetic openness” (13). This naive openness, however, is ultimately impaired by

Pris. Once again, the traits of innocence and naivety are contrasted with the experience

and cruelty of the dark-haired girl character. Krajník notes that “even in this case, we

have a substantially distorted portrayal of Dick’s actual relationship [a brief one-sided

affair with Kirsten Nelson], in which the author acts as an exploited hero, while the

woman is a calculating beast” (275, translation mine).

The novel ends with Deckard succeeding in his task and killing the androids

hiding inside Isidore’s apartment complex. After he returns home to his wife, Deckard

discovers that his newly purchased goat has been killed. In the post-apocalyptic world

of Do Androids Dream, non-artificial animals are of special significance: they are a

display of wealth and status, as well as “an expression of one's humanity” (Vint). When

Rachel mercilessly kills Deckard’s goat as an act of revenge, and Pris torments a spider

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before John Isidore’s eyes, it is seen as an act of absolute anti-empathy, incompatible

with the human nature.

Written in 1973 and published in 1977, A Scanner Darkly represents a much later return

to the dark-haired girl motif, and is considered to be Dick’s most profound anti-drug

statement. The novel’s characters are inspired by the drug-filled environment in which

Philip K. Dick found himself in 1970 after his wife Nancy left him along with their

daughter Isolde. Dick’s real-life paranoia about the CIA, the government, and even his

own friends is all perfectly palpable in the novel.

In order to stop the spread of a dangerous drug called Substance D, the

protagonist of the novel – and an undercover agent named Bob Arctor – infiltrates a

group of local drug addicts. The protagonist’s girlfriend, Donna Hawthorne, is based on

Katherine Demuelle, one of Dick’s partners from the 1970s period. However, it is

important to note that Dick and Kathy never really were in an actual relationship; “they

were friends, never lovers” (Sutin 178). In a letter, Dick describes Kathy as

virtually illiterate, just out of high school, a brooding dark girl of French peasant

background whose ambition it was [...] to be a checker at Safeway. Nobody paid

any attention to what she said except me. I believed everything she said. [...]

Without her wise and dispassionate guidance during the year after Nancy left

me, I would have gone even nutsier than I did. (Sutin 179)

As such, the relationship of Donna and Arctor practically mirrors the one of Dick and

Kathy; just like the real-life models, the couple in the novel does not engage in a sexual

relationship (Krajník 280). Lejla Kucukalic describes Donna as “an object of Arctor’s

unrequited love” (119). In one of his essays published within The Dark Haired Girl

volume, Dick talks about Kathy in context of the dark-haired girl motif:

30

Somewhere along the line I got my head straightened out; I met a dark-haired

girl who wasn’t like Pris, wasn’t cruel and calculating and insect-like and

intellectually brilliant, but was warm and kind and earnest and tender [...] She is

the most human person I ever met. (Girl 171-72)

Despite Dick’s attempt to draw the line between Kathy/Donna and the dark-haired, Pris-

like women, it is Donna Hawthorne who causes the protagonist’s downfall. Bob

Arctor’s drug addiction, and the consequent disintegration of his personality are, once

again, orchestrated by the dark-haired woman. This is another demonstration of Dick’s

fixation on the dark-haired girl motif that, to a certain degree, dictated the creation of

his female characters. It is as if Dick were unknowingly influenced by the mere

existence of the motif and wrote her character accordingly.

Donna “loves and betrays Fred/Bob” (Sutin 203), which results in Arctor’s

personality split. He no longer distinguishes between the two of his identities –

undercover agent and a drug addict. Arctor is unwillingly placed in a drug rehabilitation

center. After his departure, a fellow agent of his describes Arctor’s relationship with

Donna:

Arctor, he thought, was in love with a phantom of authority, a kind of hologram,

through which a normal man could walk, and emerge on the far side, alone.

Without ever having gotten a good grip on it – on the girl itself. […] To love an

atmospheric spirit. That was the real sorrow. Hopelessness itself. […] There are

girls like that, he thought, and those you love the most, the ones where there is

no hope because it has eluded you at the very moment you close your hands

around it. (Scanner 206)

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This excerpt very much captures the nature of Philip K. Dick’s affinity for Katherine

Demuelle, and functions as a poignant description of the elusive, transient nature of

Philip K. Dick’s real life relationships, and his inability to find a long-term partner.

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3. Twins in Philip K. Dick’s Fiction

Another concept that is crucial for an understanding of the essence of Philip K. Dick’s

bond with Jane is the theme of twins and twin-like characters. This specific

manifestation of Dick’s fixation on dualities and dichotomies plays a significant part in

a number of his short stories and novels. Sutin remarks that “the obsession, found in

twins, with dualities – as complementary and conflicting at once – has been termed

twinning by Dr. George Engel (‘The drive is always to be two, yet unique to all

others’)” (17, original italics). This chapter is concerned with three such examples of

“twinning”, in the context of both science fiction and mainstream literature.

The first of these novels is Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, written in 1970 after the

departure of his wife Nancy, and published in 1974. The novel is concerned with

deconstructing reality and search for identity in a classic “Phildickian” sense. However,

Sutin argues that it is the “exploration of various forms of love” that forms “the grand

theme” of the novel (166). The protagonist of the novel, Jason Taverner, is a popular

television host. As opposed to the previously discussed novels, Taverner represents a

slight divergence from Dick’s ordinary, mundane heroes since he is a part of an elite

social class called the Sixes. Nonetheless, he is thrown into an alternate reality where no

one, not even his former lovers, knows his identity. In his search for answers, he is

confronted with police general Felix Buckman and Alys Buckman – the prominent

twins of the novel.

Even though Felix and Alys are referred to as twins, they are born several years

apart. As such, it is safe to assume that their twin-like nature is not biological, but a

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symbolic means employed by Dick to accentuate their indivisibility. In addition to being

related, they are said to live in a 5-year-long incestuous relationship with a three-year-

old son, kept hidden in Florida. In a shocking revelation in Chapter 16, Alys Buckman

proclaims: “I live with him. We’re twins; we’re very close. Incestuously close”

(Tears 84). Their secret relationship is described by another character in the novel “as if

they’re husband and wife. They kiss and hold hands, and he’s very deferential to her

and then sometimes they have terrible fights” (Tears 97). Despite their differences and

Alys’s frequent criticisms of Felix, they are unable to exist without each other. The

police general’s “deep love for [Alys] torments him because she stands for everything

he abhors” (Warrick 157). As such, the bond between fraternal twins, siblings, partners

and a husband and wife is embodied within the Buckmans.

Not unlike We Can Build You, there is a form of a of love triangle at play, as

well. Although Alys claims that “all my libido, my sexuality, is tied up with Felix”

(Tears 84), she has a lesbian relationship with Heather Hart, one of Taverner’s former

lovers. This is an important fact, since it correlates the character of Alys directly with

Jane. According to Anne Dick’s memoirs, Dick would often mention that Jane was a

lesbian (Sutin 99). Sutin clarifies that “Phil often imagined Jane as a lesbian, and always

he thought of her as strong and courageous. In the razor-tongued Alys, who hates the

aloof efficiency of her brother, the sister within finds fictional form” (166). This

concept of Jane being a lesbian can be attributed to Dick’s constant disdain for his

mother, since “Jane’s survival as a lesbian [...] would be a slap in Dorothy’s face”

(Sutin 173).

In the course of the novel, the protagonist is once again absorbed by the reality

of the dark-haired girl. In this case, it is Alys Buckman who, after taking a powerful

space-shifting drug, creates a reality in which Taverner does not exist, and it is also her

34

who figuratively returns Taverner his identity since, with Alys’s death in Chapter 23,

Taverner is transported back into his original timeline.

The response of Felix Buckman to the death of his wife and sister is, at first,

very cold and emotionless. He proclaims that “she always tried anything new. That’s

what killed her” (Tears 108). It is also said that “he did not, surprisingly, feel very

much” believing that, eventually, “it had to happen”, and that he “must turn a terrible

personal tragedy into an advantage [...] Capitalize on the accidental death of my own

sister” (Tears 107-109). At that moment, Buckman is primarily concerned with his own

reputation of a police general, as he attempts to keep their incestuous relationship and

the existence of their son hidden from the public eye. It is not until the very last part of

the novel that Dick finally demonstrates Buckman’s true feelings. The death of Alys has

turned him into a broken individual stricken with guilt and remorse, and his persona of a

cruel police leader is suddenly overthrown. But even then Buckman attempts to deny

his grief for Alys saying:

It doesn’t mean anything. Why does a man cry? he wondered. Not like a woman;

not for that. Not for sentiment. A man cries over the loss of something,

something alive. [...] The death of a child; a man can cry for that. But not

because things are sad. A man, he thought, cries not for the future or the past but

for the present. (Tears 125)

As Dick himself stated, the moment when Buckman cries for the first time forms the

centerpiece of the novel (Sutin 166). From that point, Dick continues to describe

Buckman’s demise, which is finalized in the general’s encounter with a black man at an

all-night gas station. Buckman seeks consolation, but the burdensome sorrow has left

him completely speechless. Since he is unable to put his feelings into words, he instead

shows the stranger a drawing of a “heart pieced by an arrow”, which epitomizes his

35

condition (Tears 127). Thus, the total stranger becomes the only emotional support in

Buckman’s time of need.

The character Felix Buckman is of high importance for another reason.

Retrospectively, Dick himself seemed to have identified with this character. Especially

important for Dick was Buckman’s gas station encounter at the end of the novel. Dick

notes that eight years after the novel was written, he too helped a stranger by driving

him to an all-night gas station, in order to refill his car. In his public speech “How to

Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later”, Dick says: “I had literally

lived out a scene completely as it had appeared in my novel” (266). This link between

Dick and Buckman is also indicated by Sutin, when he describes the depressive period

in the 1970s during which Flow My Tears was written. He says that “once he started a

book, Phil’s identification with his characters was extreme” (Sutin 159), and proclaims

that “the parallel, in Alys’s death, to Phil’s loss of Jane is confirmed by the Exegesis”

(166). The pain and desperation that Buckman feels at the end of the novel is, in fact,

Dick’s fictionalized representation of the pain he felt throughout the course of his life,

be it from the loss of his sister, his spouses, or his children. Krajník notes that “just like

in General Felix Buckman’s case, it is as if Dick’s ideas of a sister and a wife coincided.

It seems that the second half of the Dickian syzygy was more of an instutiton, rather

than a particular person” (278).

The theme of “twinning” is an important part of another novel, Dr. Bloodmoney: or

How We Got Along After the Bomb, written in 1963 and published in 1965. Warrick

even argues that the “Dr. Bloodmoney is a novel of twins, intricately patterned doubles

that generate meaning by moving against each other (87). The story itself is set in

America that has been devastated by a nuclear conflict. Due to the radioactive fallout,

36

much of the population is being born with various genetic mutations. Among a small

community located in Marin County is a seven-year-old girl named Edie Kellner, who

was conceived on the day of the atomic strike. Within her body, Edie carries an unborn

twin-brother. The whole dynamic between Edie and her brother Bill is obviously based

on Dick’s own attachment to his sister, since it “vividly [embodies] the bonds and

conflicts that Phil felt by virtue of his ongoing psychic contacts with Jane” (Sutin 18).

As Anne recalls, Dick felt as if he “carried his twin inside of him” (Sutin 98).

At first, Edie is the only person who knows about Bill and is able to consult him.

She is, in fact, responsible for taking care of Bill and he provides her with valuable

advice in return. To a doctor she says: “I talk to my brother all the time and sometimes

he answers but more often he’s asleep” (Bloodmoney 72). Moreover, she treats him as

an actual brother and a friend. When she plays with other children, she insists on

including her brother, as well:

“Can my brother play?” she asked.

“You don’t have any brother,” Wilma Stone said, with contempt.

“He’s made-up,” Rose Quinn reminded her. “So it’s okay if he plays.” To Edie

she said, “He can play.” [...]

“Bill’s playing, too,” Edie said to her father. “He just got hit.”

George Kellner laughed. To Mr. Barnes he said, “That’s what comes with being

imaginary; you always get hit.” (Bloodmoney 96)

Though her parents know about the brother, they consider Bill “to be imaginary, a

pretend playmate which kept their little daughter company” (Bloodmoney 73). Others

believe that by playing with Bill she will become “introverted and delusional”

(Bloodmoney 65). Essentially, Dick is drawing from and describing his childhood

memories of playing games with his imaginary sister (Sutin 22).

37

Since Bill has never been born, he acts as a mediator between the realm of the

dead and the living. He is able to talk with passed souls, imitate their voices, as well as

possess other living bodies. Dick’s life-long fantasies of bringing Jane back to life are

paralleled in Edie’s continual attempts to bring her brother into her world. Bill wishes

“to be born like everybody else”, and wants to possess a body of a living creature to

bridge the gap between the two planes of existence (Bloodmoney 82).

In the end, Bill is able to transcend his state of non-existence and materializes

himself. In doing so, he exposes the schemes of the novel’s villain, the phocomelus

Hoppy Herrington, as he defeats him by seizing control of his body and thus saving the

local community.

Finally, the only purely mainstream novel that will be discussed is Confessions of a

Crap Artist (w 1959. p. 1975). This novel is a fictionalized depiction of Dick’s life in

Reyes Point Station; of his divorce with Kleo and consequent marriage with Anne

William Rubenson. As such, the novel presents one of Dick’s most sincere

autobiographical pieces. Though there are not direct examples of twins per se, the novel

can be viewed as a culmination of many of the aforementioned themes and motifs. It

features a dynamic between brother and sister, loveless marriages, dark-haired women,

unfaithful husbands, as well as antagonistic and controlling wives.

The character of Fay Hume is based on Anne, Dick’s third wife. Unhappily

married to Charley Hume, Fay continues in the author’s long legacy of villainous femme

fatale figures. She is painted as the one who is in full control of her marriage –

“aristocratic, disapproving, judging” (Confessions 48). On the one hand, she is

“ambivalent” about her husband, “she [thinks] of him as rough and masculine, which

[is] vital to her” (Confessions 48), yet she wants him to conform to her, and makes

38

Charley do all the chores and housework. It is Fay who is, at the end, blamed for her

husband's death.

In the course of the novel, Fay and Charley befriend a much younger married

couple, who have just moved to Marin County. If Fay and Charley Hume are meant to

represent Rubenson and Dick, then Nat and Gwen are the novelized versions of Dick

and Kleo – a naive young couple trying to escape the chaotic Berkeley life. The two

couples quickly start visiting each other. As Sutin notes, “Phil and Kleo paid visits to

Anne together, and then Phil started paying visits on his own” (98). In the fictionalized

version of the story, Nathan starts visiting Fay during her husband’s absence, after

Charley suffers a heart attack and is transported to a hospital. In reality, Anne’s husband

had died in a psychiatric institute before Dick and Kleo moved to Marin County.

All the three male protagonists of the novel can be considered autobiographical

characters, as they are representations of Dick himself. Each of them shares certain

characteristics of Dick’s personality and also represents three distinctive periods of

Philip K. Dick's life. Therefore, Dick “symbolically becomes a brother, a lover, and a

husband to the same woman” (Krajník 271, translation mine).

The character of Nat Anteil represents the end of Dick's marriage with Kleo, as

well as his sudden love for Anne. Nat is a Berkeley intellectual, who is unfaithful to his

wife (Dick had an extramarital affair prior to meeting Anne). He is, in a way, the exact

opposite of Charley Hume. Yet, in a standard Dickian manner, his love for Fay proves

to be unfounded and irrational. Without questioning and fully apprehending his doing,

Nat almost immediately falls in love with Fay’s self-contained character. Just like in

Dick’s case, it is love at first sight. After Dick married Anne in 1959, he told her: “I had

a perfectly good wife I traded in for you” (Sutin 102). Although in Dick’s case it was

not until much later that their marriage turned violent, in the novel, Nathan is unable to

39

co-exist with Fay's governing nature, and tensions arise from the very start of the affair.

He starts to regret the decision of leaving his wife “as soon as it happens” (Sutin 105),

and assumes that “Fay [is] the kind of woman who forced a man into hitting her. Who

left him no alternative” (Confessions 81). Dick himself notes that “Nat is based on me

as an adult [...] Nat is mature, but he is psychologically weak, and falls under Fay’s

control (Sutin 105).

The younger brother of Fay, Jack Isidore, is very much like John Isidore from

Do Androids Dream and has the role of an “idiot savant” (Rickman 145). Isidore shares

Dick's teenage mannerisms of obsessively hoarding “files and stacks of magazines,

boxes of notes and data” (Realities 9). He keeps a personal journal and dreams of

becoming a writer. It is also worth mentioning that, after failing to publish the novel for

several years, Dick attempted to send it to various publishers under the pseudonym of

Jack Isidore (RC 91). In Charley’s absence, Isidore gladly overtakes Charley's role of

being the main house-keeper, and is also a father figure to his daughters. When trying to

record Fay’s affair in his diary, he essentially goes as far as sexualizing his own sister.

He describes her “breasts like mounds of whipped cream” and “red-tipped cones of pure

ecstasy” (Confessions 87). Later he is then confronted by Charley who tells him that

“anybody who'd write a thing like that about his sister is a psycho” (Confessions 88).

Contrary to the dualism of the twins in Dr. Bloodmoney and Flow My Tears, the

situation here is much different. Since Jack is unable to live on his own, he moves in to

his sister’s household at the beginning of the novel. They are, however, unable to

coexist and Fay’s disdain for her brother is especially apparent. She thinks Jack is a

“horrible-looking” (Confessions 38) and mentally unhealthy individual. Jack, on the

other hand, says that Fay is “a psychopath. To her, everybody else is just an object to be

moved around. She has the mind of a three-year-old” (Confessions 153).

40

Charley Hume is described as “the type of man who beats up a woman” (103), a

simple-minded middle aged man, who drinks out of “resentment” for his wife

(Confessions 47). Charley’s alcoholism is somewhat reminiscent of Dick’s own

substance abuse which was frequent during the 1960s. In Chapter 5, Charley accurately

describes his wife and his passive marital role: “[Fay] makes life [...] She controls life,

whereas I just sit on my can and let it happen to me. [...] And she’s got firm control of

me” (Confessions 33).

The violent aspects of Anne and Dick’s marriage are foreshadowed in the novel

as well, since Charley is regularly accused of beating his wife. In the last years of

Dick’s third marriage, Dick was convinced that Anne was plotting against him, too.

According to Sutin, “Phil was telling friends that Anne killed her first husband and was

trying to kill him” (106). These fears are mirrored by Charley’s character as he suspects

that Fay was plotting to get rid of him from the very start of the marriage. Charley

believes that Fay essentially orchestrated his heart attack and proclaims that “one of us

has to kill the other [...] She knows it” (Confessions 101). The novel ends with Charley

being released from the hospital, and killing every single domestic animal found in their

home before committing suicide.

Alongside the “dark-haired girl” motif, the theme of “twinning” permeates many of

Philip K. Dick’s novels and short-stories, and as such are an important part of their

analysis. The twins of Flow My Tears and Bloodmoney are rendered as two vital parts

of one structure. Only together, they are complete. In Confessions, this concept is

subverted, as the two siblings are in direct opposition with each other, coexisting in a

twisted dynamic, similar to Dick’s real-life relationships.

41

4. Twin Cosmogonies of VALIS and The Divine Invasion

In February 1974, Philip K. Dick experienced a series of mythical visions that would

later be known as the events of “2-3-74”. This era is sometimes referred to as the

“Metaphysical Period”, for Dick’s distinct incorporation of theological ideas into his

writing (Warrick 166). Echoing the author’s fiction, a dark-haired woman appeared and

triggered a complete shift in Dick’s perception of reality. The author described the

events of Wednesday, February 20 thusly:

The doorbell rang and I went, and there stood this girl with black, black hair and

large dark eyes very lovely and intense; I stood staring at her, amazed, also

confused, thinking I’d never seen such a beautiful, and why was she standing

there? [...] I noticed, then, a fascinating gold necklace around her neck and I

said, “What is that? It certainly is beautiful” [...] The girl indicated the major

figure in it, which was a fish. “This is a sign used by the early Christians,” she

said, and then departed. (Sutin 210)

That night, Dick supposedly experienced the first of the intelligence-rich visions, and

embarked on his quest for knowledge.

Whether these visions were a result of Dick’s experimentations with drugs, his

schizophrenia, insanity, or a mere product of his imagination remains unexplained, as

the author himself was unable to determine the source. However, it is certain that this

revelation represented a paradigm shift that drastically shaped the remaining years of

his life, as well as the content of his last novels. It is the main concern of Exegesis – an

enormous volume of non-fictional writings spanning from 1974 all the way to the

author’s death in 1982. The version published in 2011 contains excerpts from the

42

original manuscript. It includes Dick’s philosophical and theological theories of “2-3-

74” that often allude to ancient religions, notably Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism.

In one of the presented theories, Dick links those experiences with Jane’s death,

as well. Sutin writes that Dick’s “yearning for his twin – melded with the events of 2-3-

74 – became the basis for a divine cosmogeny”, ever-present in the “VALIS trilogy”

(19). He describes this undetermined source of intelligence as “divine female aspects”

and says that Dick would often ascribe it “a feminine quality and termed it not only

Aphrodite but also Artemis/Diana, Athena/Minerva, Saint Sophia (Holy Wisdom, the

goddess of Gnosticism), and twin sister Jane – with whom Phil felt he was, at times, in

telepathic contact” (Sutin 214). This juxtaposition of the feminine wisdom and a male

protagonist is evident in the first two installments of the “VALIS trilogy” – VALIS

(1981) and The Divine Invasion (1981) – which along with The Transmigration of

Timothy Archer and the unfinished The Owl in Daylight form a thematic unit that is

highly autobiographical in its nature, and built upon Dick’s interpretations of the “2-3-

74” events. The first two installments of the trilogy will be discussed in this chapter.

The novel VALIS (w. 1978, p. 1981) is Dick’s most autobiographical novel altogether.

The protagonist of the novel is named Horselover Fat, which translates to Greek and

German as Philip Dick. It is made clear that the protagonist is also the narrator of the

story: “I am Horselover Fat, and I’m writing this in the third person to gain much-

needed objectivity” (Valis 11). He also adds that “if, in reading this, you cannot see that

Fat is writing about himself, then you understand nothing” (Valis 41). The line between

Horselover Fat and Philip K. Dick is purposefully blurred, while the protagonist himself

believes that he and Dick are two different people. In Chapter 9, Horselover Fat learns

about a famous science fiction writer “Phil”, but at the same time references Dick’s

43

actual books as if they were his own. In addition, Fat lives through the fictionalized

events of Dick’s final years. The biographical events such as Dick’s suicide attempts,

Christopher’s undiagnosed hernia, the cancer of his friend Doris, and the Exegesis

journal, are all depicted in the novel. This includes Beth, Fat’s wife in the novel, who is

an “unpleasant and accusatory portrait” (Sutin 240) of Dick’s last wife Tessa.

Despite its theological theme, the novel itself can be read as another account of

Dick’s tragedy of women. In the narrative, Horselover Fat is shattered by the deaths of

three characters; all of them representing three important women from Philip K. Dick’s

life. First of them is Fat’s good friend Gloria, based on Kathy Demuelle, who commits

suicide at the beginning of the novel. The character of Sherri Solvig is inspired by

Dick’s friend and roommate Doris Sautor, and her fight with cancer. In VALIS, Sherri is

portrayed as Fat’s lover. The third character is Sophia, a two-year-old child who is a

living embodiment of the “Pink Light Beams”, and can be looked at as an echo of

Jane’s spirit. Lejla Kucukalic agrees that “much of the novel is written in response to

these deaths, the narrator equating the personal and the cosmic loss of the female

principle” (132).

At the centerpiece of the novel lies the juxtaposition of the Vast Active

Intelligence Light System (Jane) and Horselover Fat (Dick). The celestial intelligence

source is ascribed a feminine quality and represents one part of the “divine syzygy”

(Valis 40). While the cosmic deity represents an all-knowing entity who is able to

predict the future, the character of Horselover Fat is a mere mortal, struggling with

mental health issues and full of despair. He is, however, given the privilege of

experiencing the gift of theophany and hence possessing the ability to acquire

previously unknown insight, such as the revelation of his son’s hernia. Dick underlines

the contrast of sanity and insanity, light and darkness, and the juxtaposition of divinity

44

and human suffering, encompassed by the tragic nature of both Dick’s and Fat’s life.

Together, these two segments form a yin-yang, twin-like entity. This “two source

cosmogony” (Valis 103) is described by Horselover Fat in Chapter 6:

The One was and was-not, combined, and desired to separate the was-not from

the was. So it generated a diploid sac which contained, like an eggshell, a pair of

twins, each an androgyny, spinning in opposite directions (the Yin and Yang of

Taoism, with the One as the Tao). The plan of the One was that both twins

would emerge into being (was-ness) simultaneously; however, motivated by a

desire to be (which the One had implanted in both twins), the counterclockwise

twin broke through the sac and separated prematurely; i.e. before full term. This

was the dark or Yin twin. Therefore it was defective. At full term the wiser twin

emerged. Each twin formed a unitary entelechy, a single living organism made

of psyche and soma, still rotating in opposite directions to each other.

(Valis 103)

As is indicated in the novel, there is a “healthy twin” and a “sick twin” that form the

two source cosmogony. Once again, Dick indirectly describes Jane’s death that is at the

heart of his reality, and stresses the omnipresent trauma from his early childhood. The

physical twin bond as seen in Dr. Bloodmoney is transposed into a spiritual connection.

In the fictional version of his Exegesis, Fat/Dick writes:

The changing information which we experience as world is an unfolding

narrative. It tells about the death of a woman. This woman, who died long ago,

was one of the primordial twins. She was half of the divine syzygy. The purpose

of the narrative is the recollection of her and her death. The Mind does not wish

to forget her. Thus the ratiocination of the Brain consists of a permanent record

of her existence, and, if read, will be understood this way. All the processed by

45

the Brain [...] is an attempt at this preservation of her; stones and rocks and

sticks and amoebae are traces of her. The record of her existence and passing is

ordered onto the meanest level of reality by the suffering Mind which is now

alone. (Valis 262)

This “bitheistic” nature of the novel is in parallel with Dick’s gnostic allusions,

as it aligns with the principles of Gnosticism – one of the earliest branches of

Christianity (Warrick 179-83). The religion itself is based on dualism. There are two

forces – an inherently evil demiurge, who is the Creator of the universe, and a godlike,

knowledgable entity (Williams). These two opposite poles cannot be separated and are

the founding stones of the universe. As opposed to standard Christianity, it accepts the

existence of evil as an inherent part of the Creator, and thus a part mankind. Walters

discloses that “in the Gnostic-mystical scheme of things, [God] is deranged. Thus his

creations (Earth and Man), created in an ignorant manner, likewise become deranged”

(Walters). Gnostic Christians believed that salvation can only be achieved through

gnosis – the acquirement of knowledge and wisdom (Williams). In VALIS, the godlike

figure is equated to the character of Sophia, while Horselover Fat/Dick is the imperfect,

suffering human trying to achieve knowledge (gnosis).

In Chapter 12, it is revealed that the entity of VALIS is incarnated as a two-year-

old, “black-haired child” (Valis 212) named Sophia, kept hidden within the confines of

a Nativity imagery. The name Sophia is of high importance for the Gnostic Christian

mythos, in which Sophia is “Wisdom personified” (Walters). It is said that for the first

time, “the Saviour takes a female form” (Valis 211). It is the girl who unites the two

previously disjointed personalities of Horselover Fat and Phil. To Fat she says: “You

stopped believing in Horselover Fat as a separate person. And no therapist and no

therapy over the years [...] has ever been able to accomplish that” (Valis 219). The

46

“Phildickian” sense for tragedy is, however, employed once again, since Sophie

suddenly dies at the end of the novel. The messiah’s death parallels that of Jane, as she

is killed in an accident by carelessness of another.

The Divine Invasion (1981) is the spiritual successor of VALIS, as it represents another

one of Dick’s variations of the Gnostic creation myth (Walters). In the novel, a woman

named Rybys conceives a child as a virgin, in an obvious Biblical parallel. However,

she is injured and dies, and her child has to be born in a synthowomb, resulting in the

boy’s memory loss. Therefore, the “tale of the death of the female at the creation of the

universe, told in the ‘Two Source Cosmogony,’ written by Fat in his exegesis in VALIS,

has been enacted again” (Warrick 174).

Rybys’s child is a boy named Emmanuel – a reincarnation of the Jewish God

Yahweh. As it is in VALIS, the other part of the “divine syzygy” is represented by a

young girl. This feminine, celestial entity is materialized within the character of Zina

Pallas – a dark-haired girl with “mischief and delight” (Invasion 119) showing in her

dark eyes. She is a continuation of the “Gnostic Christan myth of Sophia” (Walters).

Much like Sophie in VALIS, Zina, the “female side of God” (Invasion 173), represents

Wisdom. In this instance, she is also compared to Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of

wisdom, but at the same time is said to be the manifestation of Torah, the Jewish Book

of Wisdom, as well as the Tree of Life (Invasion 166-67). Thus, she is the embodiment

of the spirit of Jane, knowledge, and life in one character. When Emmanuel and Zina

finally unite together, they form the “two portions of the Godhead [that] have been

detached from each other for millennia. But now [they] have come together again, the

male half of the Godhead and the female half” (Invasion 173).

47

It is Zina who helps Emmanuel regain his memory in Chapter 4. She reveals his

divine identity, and thus completes his full potential. Only then he realizes that he

“occup[ies] the entire universe”, he is “now everywhere equally” (Invasion 53).

Together, the boy and the girl form the fabric of reality, and the blueprint of the cosmos

itself. As Emmanuel proclaims: “Zina and I will unite in a syzygy which is

macrocosmic; we will not have a soma, which is to say, a physical body distinct from

the world. The world will be our body, and our mind the world’s mind” (Invasion 204).

As indicated in Chapter 13, in the reality that is newly created by their conjunction, Zina

and Emmanuel essentially become brother and sister. She calls Emmanuel her “little

brother”, and even introduces him as “Manny Pallas” (Invasion 134), ascribing him her

last name.

Not only she guides Emmanuel, but Zina also aids Herb Asher – Emmanuel’s

foster father portrayed as a Saint Joseph-like figure. Asher, at one point, describes the

nature of Zina’s guidance:

He had, suddenly, a vivid inner glimpse of the person whose voice he heard; he

saw in his own mind a visage, female, a placid but strong face. A metal mask

had been pushed back from that visage, exposing wise, impassive eyes; a

beautiful classic face, like Athena; he was staggered with astonishment. This

could not be Yahweh. This was a woman. But like no woman he had ever seen.

(Invasion 86)

In the end, Zina and Emmanuel, as the two inseparable parts of the divine

syzygy defeat the adversary Belial, the Jewish equivalent of Satan, who yearns to take

control of planet Earth.

48

All in all, the dualistic nature of Dick’s fiction is further demonstrated even in his late

fiction. The mind-altering events of “2-3-74” were, in Dick’s mind, potentially linked

with Jane, too. Despite their importance, these supernatural experiences are simply

superimposed over previously established dichotomies. In face of the unknown, Dick

once again resorts to the idea of the protagonist being one part of a dualistic structure, as

is indicated in the author’s inclination to the Gnostic syzygy, depicted in the

abovementioned novels.

49

Conclusion

The death of Philip K. Dick’s twin sister Jane represents a trauma that is not only

crucial for studying the author’s life, but his fiction as well. In the course of the author’s

life, the trauma had become an inherent part of his reality and, as such, its imprint can

be traced throughout his oeuvre. In consequence, Jane’s death can be linked with

several recurring themes and motifs of the author’s fiction. The presence of this trauma

is evident in a number of his novels and short stories, as well as non-fiction essays,

letters, and speeches, and manifests in the author’s fixation on the archetype of a dark-

haired girl, which concords with the twin-like characters and entities.

Understanding the extent to which Jane’s death influenced Dick’s life provides a

unique outlook of the author’s fiction and becomes especially important in the analysis

of his, rather idiosyncratic, depiction of female characters. The novels such as We Can

Build You, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and A Scanner Darkly illustrate the

motif of the “dark-haired girl”. This particular trope is firmly rooted in the author’s

personal life; it can be viewed as a fictional re-imagination of Dick’s sister Jane, as well

as a result of his difficult relationships with women in general. Be it intentional or not,

this particular archetype serves as a model for many of his female characters.

Such characters very often become the main antagonists of the novels

storytelling narratives, and are foils to Dick’s predominantly male protagonists. Though

it may not sometimes be apparent, the relationships of these two opposites are often at

the very heart of the author’s narratives.

In addition, Philip K. Dick’s focus on dualities is apparent in the novels

introduced in the second half of the thesis. Once again, there are two characters that are

50

intrinsic to the narrative, and form the centerpiece of the novel. Even though Dick’s

fiction in light of the supernatural events of “2-3-74” experiences a paradigm shift, the

twin realities of the “VALIS trilogy” can be linked with the notion of duality stemming

from Jane’s death, too.

The aim of the thesis was to demonstrate the autobiographical nature of the

theme of twins and its adjacent motifs in selected works of Philip K. Dick, and examine

the novels in parallel to the author’s life. The thesis demonstrates that, despite the

scarcity of these topics in the critical discourse about Dick’s work, understanding the

origin of such themes and motifs is crucial in capturing the essence of Dick’s fiction. As

has been demonstrated on the novels selected from different periods of Dick’s life, these

recurring tropes can be, to a certain degree, linked with Jane’s death, which influenced

the author’s writing. As such, a large number of Dick’s short stories and novels can be

considered autobiographical, which is not something very common in the genre of

science fiction literature.

51

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Dick, Philip K. A Scanner Darkly. London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2012.

---. Confessions of a Crap Artist. New York: Entwhistle Books, 1975. Digital.

---. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb. New York: Mariner Books,

2012.

---. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. New York: Mariner Books, 2012.

---. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2012.

---. The Dark Haired Girl. Willimantic: Ziesing, 1988.

---. The Divine Invasion. New York: Timescape Books, 1981. Digital.

---. The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical

Writings. Ed. Lawrence Sutin, New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

---. Valis. London: Phoenix House, 2012.

---. We Can Build You. New York: DAW Books, 1972. Digital.

Secondary Sources

Carpenter, Frederic I. “Puritans Preferred Blondes. The Heroines of Melville and

Hawthorne.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 2, Boston: The New Inland

Quarterly, Inc., 1936, 253-272. JSTOR. Web. 24 April 2019.

Holliday, Valerie. “Masculinity in the Novels of Philip K. Dick.” Extrapolation, vol. 47,

no. 2, Brownsville: Extrapolation, 2006, 280+. Literature Resource Center.

Web. 24 April 2019.

52

Krajník, Filip. “Přízrak tmavovlásky v životě a díle Philipa K. Dicka.” Dokážeme vás

stvořit, by Philip K. Dick, 1972, Prague: Argo, 2016. 261-89. Digital.

Kucukalic, Lejla. Philip K. Dick: Canonical Writer of the Digital Age. New York:

Routledge, 2009.

RC, Lord. Pink Beam: A Philip K. Dick Companion. Ganymedean Slime Mold Pubs,

2006.

Rickman, Gregg. “’What Is This Sickness?’: ‘Schizophrenia’ and We Can Build You.”

Philip K. Dick: Contemporary Critical Interpretations. Ed. Samuel J. Umland,

Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995, 143-56.

Sutin, Lawrence. Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick. New York: Citadel

Twilight, 1991.

Umland, Samuel J. “Unrequited Love in We Can Build You.” Philip K. Dick:

Contemporary Critical Interpretations. Ed. Samuel J. Umland, Westport:

Greenwood Press, 1995, 127-42.

Vinci, Tony M. “Posthuman Wounds: Trauma, Non-Anthropocentric Vulnerability, and

the Human/Android/Animal Dynamic in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of

Electric Sheep?.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association,

vol. 47, no. 2, Chicago: Midwest Modern Language Association, 2014, 91-112,

JSTOR. Web. 24 April 2019.

Vint, Sherryl. “Speciesism and Species Being in Do Androids Dream of Electric

Sheep?” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, vol. 40,

no. 1, University of Manitoba, Mosaic, 2001, 111+, Literature Resource Center.

Web. 24 April 2019.

Wallek, René, and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. London: Penguin Books, 1963.

Digital.

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Walters, F. Scott. “The Final Trilogy of Philip K. Dick.” Extrapolation, vol. 38, no. 3,

Kent: Kent State University Press, 1997, 222+. Literature Resource Center.

Web. 24 April 2019.

Warrick, Patricia S. Mind in Motion: The Fiction of Philip K. Dick. Carbondale:

Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

Williams, Michael. “Gnosticism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica,

Inc., March 19, 2019. Web. April 24 2019

54

Summary

The aim of the thesis is to document one autobiographical element of Philip K. Dick’s

fiction, which tends to be omitted from the study of the author’s work – the bond

between the author and his twin sister Jane, who died shortly after birth, The thesis

intends to determine the extent to which this childhood trauma influences his writing

and narratives, and the employment of the author’s recurring themes and motifs.

The first chapter summarizes the entirety of Philip K. Dick’s life, since it is

deemed highly important for the consequent analysis of his fiction. The chapter focuses

on Dick’s formative years, as well as his personal relationships and marriages that are

often fictionalized within author’s oeuvre.

The following three chapters are concerned with the selected works and their

analysis. This includes the motif of a dark-haired girl, which is a recurring trope in

Dick’s fiction, the twins and twin-like characters, as well as the divine syzygy depicted

in the author’s later fiction, all of which are linked with Dick’s personal life – the death

of his sister, and his difficult relationships with women.

55

Resumé

Tato práce si dává za cíl zdokumentovat určitý autobiografický prvek fikce Philipa K.

Dicka, který ve studiích děl tohoto autora často zůstává opomíjen. Tímto prvkem je

literární vyobrazení vztahu mezi autorem samotným a jeho dvojčetem, sestrou Jane,

která zemřela několik týdnů po porodu. Kromě toho se práce snaží určit do jaké míry

toto trauma z raného dětství ovlivňuje autorovu tvorbu, jehož vyprávění často využívá

opakujících se literárních témat a motivů.

Jelikož je to považováno za velmi důležitý prvek následného rozboru

jednotlivých děl, první kapitola shrnuje život Philipa K. Dicka. Tato kapitola se

zaměřuje se na autorovo dětství a jeho osobní vztahy a manželství. Fiktivní verze těchto

událostí jsou pak často součástí díla tohoto autora.

Následující kapitoly se zabývají analýzou vybraných děl. Zaobírají se tak

motivem tmavovlasé dívky, což je tropa opakující se napříč Dickovou beletrií, ale také

zobrazení dvojčat, ať už opravdových či symbolických, nebo motiv božské syzygie.

Všechny zmíněné motivy jsou přímo napojeny na autorův osobní život, zejména na smrt

jeho sestry a jeho komplikované vztahy.