Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Lesson Plan

Instances of Unreality

Kind of Activity:

Group Work

Objective:

Students will identify the ways in which Philip K. Dick challenges narrative expectations.

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.5, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.2, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.1, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.3

Structure:

Confusion of identity, changing rules, hallucinatory experiences, mistaking electronic for organic and vice versa: these are all staples of a Philip K. Dick story. Sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly, Dick is always challenging our expectations. Deckard and Isidore aren't so much unreliable narrators, rather, the entire universe in which the book it set is unreliable.

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