Monday, February 15, 2016

A Critical Analysis of Eye in The Sky by Philip K. Dick

Before I reveal my perspective and analysis on this fascinating book, it's only appropriate to include the summary, for anyone who might be interested in reading it.

"When a routine tour of a particle accelerator goes awry, Jack Hamilton and the rest of his tour group find themselves in a world ruled by Old Testament morality, where the smallest infraction can bring about a plague of locusts. Escape from that world is not the end, though, as they plunge into a Communist dystopia and a world where everything is an enemy." (I took this from the back of the copy I own).  

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Recently, I have gotten into Philip K. Dick's work.  I have so far read Ubik and just finished reading Eye in the Sky.  What's interesting about the two, are the reoccurring themes and ambiguity in the ending of both novels.  Dick has a way of pulling his audience in and having them experience what the main protagonist in the story is experiencing.  The audience is looking through the eyes of that character.  Whatever they see, the audience sees. Readers have a limited perspective on the world, just like the character. I will be exploring this concept throughout the post, focusing on the brilliant novel, Eye in the Sky.


Cover of the first edition. Source: Wikipedia, Eye in the Sky (Novel)






An In Depth Summary

If you have already read this book, feel free to skip to the Analysis

Jack Hamilton, the main protagonist in Eye of the Sky, works for Colonel T.E Edwards at the California Maintenance Labs, where they work on missiles and other top secret research for the government.  Because their projects are not out in the public, the company is extremely strict on any security risks (keep this in mind, because it is extremely important for later on in the plot).  Colonel Edwards has received information that Hamilton's wife, Marsha, is a plant security risk based on a report he received.  The report was brought to him by Hamilton's closest coworker (or at least that is what I assumed), Charley McFeyffe.  The report includes meetings that Marsha has attended and petitions she's signed that lead Colonel Edwards to believe that Marsha is a communist (the story takes place in the late 1950s). Colonel Edwards suspends Hamilton, and tells him to bring conclusive evidence that she is not a communist or to get rid of her.  After this meeting, McFeyffe approaches Hamilton and offers to take Hamilton and his wife out for drinks, but they end up attending a routine tour of a proton particle accelerator called the Belmont Bevatron. 

"The central element of the Bevatron is the giant magnet whose field accelerates the beam of protons and provides them with increasing ionization. The positively charged protons are introduced into the linear chamber from the Cockroft-Walton acceleration tube." (Dick, 14)

The three of them end up joining a group of other people interested in viewing the Bevatron as well. The group consists of an old man who is a war veteran, Arthur Silvester. A middle aged plump woman, Edith Pritchet, her young son, David Pritchet and a woman named Joan Reiss.  Their tour guide, Bill Laws, a black man who has great knowledge and experience in the field of physics, keeps the group together, until an alarm goes off and the Bevatron accelerator creates an explosion that leaves everyone 'unconscious.'  After the incident, Hamilton wakes up in a hospital bed beside his wife, Marsha.  Both have a weird feeling about their environment but can't seem to think of why they feel that way. On their way home, Hamilton is stung by a bee (this is important to keep in mind for later parts of the novel).  After heading home and resting, Hamilton ends up getting a new job the day after the incident at Electronics Development Agency (EDA), from a man named Doctor Guy Tillingford (who knew Hamilton's father).  The company is working on a way to communicate with God and Tillingford gives Hamilton an important note containing information on where he can find a prophet who will assist him with any confusions he has.  Hamilton then discovers that he is living in a world where he must pray to get certain things and disassociate himself from activities of sin.  This is important because he meets a 'prostitute' named Silky at a local bar called Safe Harbor where he goes for drinks.  She is enticing and Hamilton is attracted to her (I will go into a little more detail about why this is important in the analysis).  McFeyffe is also at the bar and the three of them decide to head out while McFeyffe drives them around town, stopping at an old rundown church.  Inside the church, a man, Father O'Farrel who recites a phrase in Latin, causes McFeyffe and Hamilton to ascend while holding onto an umbrella. They end up high enough where they can witness the sun revolving around the earth (the geocentric model).  They also notice that there isn't any other planet besides Earth.  As they are ascending they catch a glimpse of an eye, McFeyffe freaks out and the eye stares at them and focuses on their umbrella, thus making it pop.  Hamilton and McFeyffe both start descending to what Hamilton compares to a hell-like world.  They both end up near the location of where the prophet can be found (Cheyenne, Wyoming). Hamilton meets with the prophet and finds out that there is a god whose name isn't known but is called (Tetragrammaton).  The world revolves around the idea that (Tetragrammaton) will give the characters what they 'deserve'; whether it is reward or punishment. He will give the people food, drinks, a running car, etc. or if they 'deserve' to be punished, they will get locusts on them, boils, acne, anything that will interfere with the character's physical appearance.  At that moment, Hamilton notices a plaque of names of people who are faithful to the 'One True Faith.'  The only name on the plaque who he recognized was Arthur Silvester, the old army veteran.  Hamilton then remembers that the doctor in the hospital he woke up to stated that Silvester was the only one who didn't fully lose consciousness during the incident. Hamilton comes to the conclusion that he and the others are living in a world perceived by Silvester.  Everything about this world was normal to Silvester.  It's his reality.  Hamilton then immediately gathers the seven others from the tour group to go over what he discovered and what they need to do.  They end up going to the hospital Sunday morning, where Silvester is being held for his injuries.  They confront him and all hell breaks lose when angels start coming out of the TV to attack the group.  Miss Reiss shoves Silvester violently and he hits his head and becomes unconscious.  The angels and everything in Silvester's 'reality' disappears.  The group cheers thinking they have won, but they soon realize they are in someone else's 'world.'

The group has now entered Edith Pritchet's 'reality.' One that resembles a Victorian Universe. The audience discovers that Marsha has no sexual organs and her body is compared to that of a bee's. Hamilton and the rest of the group have realized that if they can get the person whose world they're in to become unconscious, they can escape and may be closer to the 'real world.' In this universe, Hamilton encounters Silky again, this time as a 'sexless' friend of Marsha's. They end up driving back to Hamilton's house where Marsha has prepared dinner.  Hamilton and Marsha have an argument about what's going on in this world and how no one seems to mind or even notice that there is no Russia or car horns or factories.  Marsha states that the people don't notice because it isn't in 'their' world, it's Pritchet's, anything in her 'reality' is the reality of the world.  Aggravated with everything going on, Hamilton tells his wife that he is going to have 'sexual intercourse' with Silky to defy this 'reality'.  He takes Silky into his audiophile room, where the audience can see how much interest Hamilton has for music (important detail that comes up in my analysis). Eventually, Hamilton kisses Silky and after that she disappears.  Pritchet, who is now at his house (along with the others in the group) states that she abolished her because that kind of behavior is non-existent in her 'reality.' Hamilton recognizes that some people from the group such as Laws and Marsha don't mind this world and are happy in it.  Hamilton tries to tell them that this isn't the 'real world,' it's governed by Edith Pritchet.  Laws makes it clear to Hamilton why he's okay with it; he has a good job, a life where he is happy.  He states that Hamilton wouldn't understand because in the 'real world,' Hamilton grew up with a well-known father, he has a wife, a great job, a cat, etc.  Hamilton still decides he is going to get Pritchet unconscious and he, Marsha and the rest of the group (besides Laws) decide to take Pritchet on a picnic where they plan to poison her.  Their plan does not work, since Pritchet is aware that they are trying to get her to become unconscious, so she abolishes the chloroform, making it disappear.  Hamilton, McFeyffe, Marsha and Reiss decide to try a different route and convince Pritchet to abolish everything in the world, leaving nothing.  There was no longer her world left which meant her reality and consciousness left with it.  After thinking he has won again, Hamilton hears a familiar voice thanking him for doing his part very well in the plan of getting Pritchet to become unconscious.  The voice belonged to Joan Reiss.

In Reiss' world, everything was the result of her own paranoia.  Hamilton now owns a gun, his house resembles a living organism: blood spouts from the faucet, the cupboards open and close on its own, the hall resembles the throat, the walls are of similar texture to skin.  Silky is in this world again, except this time she resembles a spider, making webs in the audiophile room, trying to trap Hamilton.  Laws saves him and they try to escape from this house that is very much 'alive.'  They manage to get out and conspire a plan to kill Reiss.  Reiss surprises the group (this isn't as surprising to the audience if they are paying attention to the different realities.  Her world is filled with paranoia, so it only makes sense if she is incredibly cautious and paranoid herself).  She tells them how she knows they've been conspiring to kill her for a while.  Laws admits that it's true and they try to kill her (killing her will force her to become unconscious, thus leaving the world).  David, Edith Pritchet's son is successful and they leave Reiss world.

At this point, Hamilton hopes to wake up at Bevatron, but instead, Hamilton and the rest of the group are in a world where capitalists are savages and the working class is rioting, throwing bricks at them.  They manage to escape the riot and try to head to the Hamilton's household, but instead they find that their neighborhood is filled with gun shops and armed soldiers, so they head to the Safe Harbor.  Silky is back to her 'old' self, a prostitute.  Hamilton notices that the bar is filled with armed workmen and that the bar is actually a front for a Communist Party cell.  He realizes what he has to do and Marsha is knocked out of her consciousness.  Nothing happens.  Hamilton realizes that he is not in Marsha's 'reality.'  Hamilton discovers that this is all McFeyffe's 'reality' and that HE is actually the communist and not his wife.  McFeyffe mentions that he made Hamilton's wife seem like the communist because her 'type' is dangerous. She's an individual, who basically looks at all perspectives, but follows her own laws and ethics, refusing to accept authority.  He describes how this kind of behavior undermines society and how it 'topples' the whole structure.  Hamilton manages to attack him and McFeyffe, as a result, is weakened tremendously.

Hamilton then wakes up to the chaos of the Bevatron incident, everyone being assisted by Red Cross medical assistants.  Some time goes by and Hamilton tries to explain to the Colonel at his 'real' job at California Maintenance Labs that McFeyffe is the real communist.  The Colonel states that this is just Hamilton's perspective and he does not have any hard evidence to prove it.  There is a report on Hamilton's wife with a trail of her recent meetings and petitions she signed.  An interesting quote in the conversation with the Colonel:

"No proof of what goes on in Charley McFeyffe's mind.  Any more than he had proof of what goes on in my wife's mind" (Dick, 235).
Hamilton leaves knowing nothing will really get solved, he is okay with losing his job, he understands the outcome.  He mentions that he can always get another job, he's just glad that Marsha was telling the truth about her not being a Communist.  After his experiences in the different realities, his perspective has changed in the 'real world.'  He states that he is always going to be honest and say exactly what he thinks.  He decides to go into business with the tour guide, Bill Laws.  Edith Pritchet invests in their company (building phonographs so people can listen to music).  Laws is then bitten by an insect, an earwig.


My Analysis

First off, this book was absolutely intriguing.  I could not put it down even when I wanted to.  The concept of reality and the idea of different perspectives have recently been interesting themes to try to analyze/evaluate.  Dick does a great job IMO giving readers a chance to analyze these reoccurring themes in his books. In Eye of the Sky, we are looking through the eyes of Jack Hamilton.  For the most part, he has a pretty stable lifestyle: a wife, a job, a nice house, etc.  It's when he is about to lose his job and is questioning whether his wife is a Communist or not, is when he starts to live in other 'realities.'

The first reality that Hamilton enters is that of Arthur Silvester.  Silvester is an old man who is also a war veteran.  There is some subtlety in the novel that hints to what kind of person Silvester might be:
"Hamilton observed the man wore a tarnished wedge of metal on his cotton jacket.  The hell with him he thought bitterly.  The hell with patriotism in general.  In the specific and the abstract.  Birds of a feather, soldiers and cops.  Anti-intellectual and anti-Negro.  Anti-everything except beer, dogs and guns" (Dick, 14-15).
When Hamilton enters Silvester's world, he is in a world where the society is ran by religion.  There is no need for logic, as long as you can pray.  The religion is called Second Babiism.  Second Babiism is also a cult that Silvester joined and truly believed in, which ultimately contributed to the way he perceived the society in the 'reality' before the Bevatron explosion.  It's interesting to compare this to the world we live in today (outside the book, of course).  We all live on Earth, some of us live in the same state, or even the same city.  The fact that two or more people can be at the same place at the same time and perceive things differently is what I think PKD was trying to get at in Eye of the Sky.  All 8 characters were in the same place at the same time (Bevatron explosion).  From the outside, all the characters seemed 'normal' and it seemed to me (as the reader) that the characters and I were all in the same 'reality.'  After the explosion, the audience gets insight to the perspectives of 'reality' that some of the characters actually viewed as 'normal.'

After Silvester, we look through the eyes of Edith Pritchet, Joan Reiss and last but not least, Charley McFeyffe.  I won't go into much detail about their worlds (more detail about them in the Summary), the point is that those worlds are their perspectives of 'reality' and probably how they lived it, since everything in the owner's world seemed normal to them.  McFeyffe's world was an interesting twist, because a reader might assume that the Communist world belongs to Marsha.  I was skeptical about that because after reading Ubik, I knew there had to be some twist that was ready to unfold.  At first, I didn't know whose world it was, but I had a strong feeling it wasn't Marsha's.  When Marsha is left unconscious and the reality of the world continues, there's only really two other people left that I assumed: Hamilton or McFeyffe.  When McFeyffe was revealed as the maker of the world, it soon dawned upon me that there were subtle details (very nuanced, IMO) in the beginning of the book about McFeyffe's behavior and attitude.  McFeyffe was targeting Marsha due to the fact that she had looked at different perspectives on certain ideas and topics.  Although she was attending meetings and signing petitions that related to concepts of Communism, she was an individual (as McFayffe puts it), she didn't belong to one tribal group.  Instead, she opened her POV to different perspectives. If one fit appropriately with what she thought was 'right,' she acknowledged it (i.e contributing money to the Society for the Advancement of Colored People).  I for one liked Marsha's approach and character throughout the book. Being open to different perspectives, ideas, and concepts can be good when trying to objectively analyze anything.  If one has a preset ideology they filter things through, then there is little to no objectivity, because whatever is being analyzed is being analyzed through one set of eyes, one perspective, one idea.  Reading PKD novels such as Ubik and Eye in the Sky have really helped me understand the importance of different perspectives and how reality and the world we live in can differ from person to person.  This is a great thing because it emphasizes individuality.  Groups based on different ideologies can (slightly) hinder someone's perspective on articles, books, and studies they read or alter their perspective on movies, TV shows, etc.  It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it is best to not accept one ideology and to be more open to different perspectives (even the ones you don't agree with).  Reading/listening to even the perspectives you don't agree with, with an open mind will allow room for objectively, criticizing certain ideas and concepts.  There are some ideas/groups I don't necessarily agree with, but I try not to ignore or unfairly criticize them based on what they believe.  If I can objectively look at information they have written and criticize it based on empirical evidence, then I will do so, regardless of their ideology.  There have been multiple times where I acquire greater knowledge in specific areas by reading well written articles and/or studies by people who identify with a specific ideological group that I don't truly agree with.  I myself, want to be like Marsha, an individual who is open to different perspectives, even if I don't agree with them.  Doing this will further assist me in objective criticism/analysis of certain articles/studies I read, and to open my mind to new ideas that I may not have thought of before.

Leaving the theme of the importance of different perspectives, I want to talk about Silky for a little bit.  She is an important part of the novel.  She somewhat represents the 'bad' in the different realities.  She is a prostitute in the world ruled by religion, a friend of Marsha's who ultimately ends up kissing Hamilton in the Victorian world, a spider like creature in the world of paranoia (where everything is out to get you) and back to the prostitute in the Communist world.  In my opinion, I think she represents the imperfection in all societies, all realities, all perspectives.  Nothing is perfect and even though one can try to conceptualize a perfect world, I don't think it could be possible.  If humans have never lived in a world of perfection, how can our ideas and perspectives be perfect too? In Eye of the Sky, I thought that was why Silky was put in the plot.  To show the audience that there is no such thing as a perfect world, even though the characters saw their reality as accurate representations of the world.

Another interesting detail I noticed was the use of bugs and insects to show the characters whether or not they were in 'reality' or someone else's perspective on 'reality.'  Hamilton gets stung by the bee on his way home from the hospital (in Silvester's 'reality').  Marsha is compared to a sexless bee and all insects disappear in Edith Pritchet's 'reality.'  Laws turns into a creature representing some sort of bug/insect in Reiss' 'reality.'  What is interesting is that in the end, when they are in the 'real world,' Laws gets bitten by an earwig.  Laws and Hamilton also want to go into the business of making phonographs so that people can listen to music.  This is important because it is shown that Hamilton has a vast collection and great appreciation for music. In one part of the book, Hamilton wants to show Silky his collection before Edith Pritchet abolishes music:

"Let's get down there before she abolishes music." (Dick, 139)
The ending is ambiguous so this is my opinion, but I think there may be a possibility that they are in Hamilton's 'reality'.  The reality, when he realizes that his perspective has changed after the experiences he's encountered.  The 'reality' that still includes doing what he enjoys, a field in music/building/electronics.  I think though, that the ending shouldn't be analyzed as deeply as the concept and theme behind the book.  PKD is notorious for his endings, leaving the reader satisfied and unsatisfied at the same time, and I appreciate that!  The main focus and message to get from this book is to recognize and to be open to new perspectives in life.  Realize that you and your sibling don't look at the world the same, people can see the world through their main beliefs and set ideologies.  Hamilton realized this and at the end his experiences through the different worlds ultimately changed his perspective on 'reality.' Marsha had already understood that everyone had different perspectives and how it affected others in the world.

Eye in the Sky was a great read, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in understanding the importance of how the world is perceived differently by everyone.  How ideas and concepts can be filtered through certain perspectives, and how opening the mind to different perspectives will ultimately assist one to obtain an objective view on different theories, hypotheses, ideas and topics.  To ultimately come up with a conclusion of their own, trying to disregard ideological beliefs and predetermined biases.

Interesting Links

Note: I don't agree with all hypotheses in some of the links, however I think it will be beneficial for myself and readers to look at all sides of the concept of reality/differences in perspective.


1) A Matter of Perspective

2) Consciousness and Its Place in Nature

3) Space, Time and Consciousness

4) What is Reality?

5) The Physical World As A Virtual Reality

6) Consciousness and Awareness

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