The pre-persons

English Essay 01-05-2008

Philip K. Dick: The Pre-Persons 1987

The subject of abortion has been debated in almost every country of the world, and one of the questions it brings to discussion is “how should we define humanity?” Being able to survive outside the wound of your mother is one of the things that defines being human, but also the possession of a soul is thought to define humanity. Many ethical stands can be taken on this subject, and the short story “The Pre-Persons” takes one. “The Pre-Persons” also illustrates the free right and the importance of individual pursuits. It is also the individuality of the post-modern world the article “Will you be lonesome tonight” debates, and taking this and Picture 1 into perspective, I will analyze and interpret the opinions of how the post-modern world defines humankind.

The narrative in the extract from the short story “The Pre-Persons” starts in the middle, in medias res. A third person narrator whose point of view lies with the main character tells it. This means that not only do we follow the main character physically; we also get an indirect characterization of him by hearing about his thoughts and feelings. Particularly this is important to notice, because his feelings throughout the story give the reader a good understanding of the plot and problematic of the story.

The main character is a 12-year-old boy called Walter. He lives with his family in what seems to be a normal American neighborhood. The reader does not get much direct information about Walter, but by hearing his thoughts, we get to know what his deepest fear is: the abortion truck. The story revolves around this abortion truck and around Walter’s fear of abortion. He is afraid that his parents will get rid of him, because he has seen that happen to many other children on his street: “They couldn’t take you now. Look – you have a soul; the law says a twelve-year-old boy has a soul.” (Lines 26-27) His parents try to reassure him that it cannot happen to him, but not with the reasons being that they love and care for him. They do it in a cold and rational way, suggesting that there are no feelings involved. The abortion truck is comparable with a dogcatcher, and when reading the story, one gets the impression that the “pre-persons” simply are seen as animals with no conscience and understanding of concepts. The abortion clinic, County Facility, also evokes bad connotations, because the euthanization of the children there can be compared with the extermination camps where the Jews were slaughtered during the Second World War.

With this story, the author, Philip Dick, illustrates the future United States as he sees it in 1987 when the Congress passed the rules of abortion. He reduces it to the absurd to show his ethical stand on the matter and to show that a moral validity and acceptance of a subject can lead to very unethical consequences: If abortion why not infanticide?

“The name of it all is kill me. Kill them when they’re the size of a fingernail, or a baseball, or later on, if you haven’t done it already, suck the air out of the lungs ...

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“The name of it all is kill me. Kill them when they’re the size of a fingernail, or a baseball, or later on, if you haven’t done it already, suck the air out of the lungs of a ten-year-old boy and let him die. It’s a certain kind of woman advocating this all. They used to call them ’castrating females’.” (Lines 115-118)

Dick imagines that abortion is legal until the soul enters the body. The soul enters the body when one has the reasoning ability to do simple algebra. Everyone sees it as a fair rule expect Walter, who cannot see what simple algebra and age have to do with having a soul: “If I have a soul now like the law says, then I had a soul then, or else we have no souls… ” (page 4 lines 59-60) By letting Walter be reflective and actually the cleverest and most reasonable in the story, Dick illustrates that a child sometimes can be as thoughtful and versatile as any adult can be. In the story, Dick also speaks ironically of the mentality of the American people: “… If only I don’t know they suck the air out of the lungs of the kids they have there, he thought. Destroy them that way. Why? Cheaper, dad had said. Saves the taxpayers’ money.” (Lines 74-76) He shows the impersonal, liberal and capitalistic way of thinking. Nor when Walter’s mother wants to have an abortion with a new child is it emotional questions that comes into her mind, but it is about doing what is in and saving money:

“And the kind of abortions they give now, for women in early stages – it only costs one hundred dollars … the price of ten gallons of gas! And you can talk about it with practically everybody who drops by for hours.” (Lines 94-97)

It is also this drive of work, ambition and money that the text “Will you be lonesome tonight” focuses on. Intimacy and a deeper meaning with life are two things the youngsters of the Nineties do not have to go with their laptops and cell phones. This is a sad developing, because in the end of the day, the personal and social values are worth more than the materialistic values are. Picture 1 also portrays the importance of the social relations. It depicts a mother cradling her severely deformed, naked child in a bath chamber. The mother’s facial expression and the striking nature of the photograph give a strong impact on the viewer. In this picture, we see warmth and love between the mother and child, which seem improbable to occur in the extract from “The Pre-Persons”. The mother in the picture loves her child boundlessly despite the child’s deformities, and from the way she is taking care of the child, one could never imagine her giving up on it.

The Pre-Persons, Will you be lonesome tonight and Picture 1 are all defining humanity in different ways. Dick is demonstrating that a definition based on intellect alone will lead to an insensitive society that cannot see the significance of the capacity to feel. Taking the other text and the picture in account humanity should not be defined by how much we know, but by how we respond emotionally to the world around us – and most importantly to other people. Both texts conclude that emotional awareness, empathy, intimacy and benevolence are vital for a human being.

Human nature is the fundamental nature of human beings as well as the range of human behavior, and even though human nature is believed to be invariant over long periods of time and across different cultural contexts, it is debatable what a human being needs in order to feel fulfilled. In the poem “It ain’t what you do it’s what it does to you” the view on human nature is that what matters to a person is to find comfort in what you do. One has to follow his/her own path and not follow the footsteps of others. The free right is free so that you can use it for something that does it for you and not just because it is the in thing to do as in the “The Pre-Persons”. Another important aspect for a human being, if you ask Simon Armitage, is love and feeling for what you do. Human beings need to get that feeling, spiritual ballast, about something or someone otherwise life is not worth living: “His own mother frightened him. The cold and opaque eyes mirrored nothing, no soul inside, and he thought, it’s you who don’t have a soul, you and your skinny messages not-to-be.” In the story, “The Pre-Persons” the capitalism has taken over the soul, and only the child Walter sees the danger of it.