A Scanner Darkly

‘“We do not know as yet,’ he continued presently, more calmly, ‘specifically who these men—or rather animals—who prey on our young, as if in a wild jungle abroad, as in some foreign country, not ours.’”

Arctor, speaking to an Orange County Lion’s Club (a service organization), tries to elicit sympathy for users, portraying them as victims of a concerted effort to ensnare them in a web of drug use and then to vilify them as “commies” or less than human. The effort is met with stunned silence, so he returns to the official agency script and demonizes them as “animals” seeking to corrupt and destroy America’s youth. The rhetoric is classic: dehumanize the enemy so that any punishment or harsh tactic can be justified in the name of saving the innocent.

“Don’t kick their asses after their on it. The users, the addicts. Half of them, most of them, especially the girls, didn’t know what they were getting on or even that they were getting on anything at all. Just try to keep them, the people, any of us, from getting on it.”

After concluding his speech to the Lion’s Club, Arctor returns to the dais for a final comment, one final plea for empathy. The real villains, he argues, are the pushers and dealers who get kids hooked on drugs in the first place by slipping them “some reds in a glass of wine” (20) and then injecting them with a toxic mixture of harder drugs after they’ve passed out. It’s unclear if this scenario is accurate or simply another scare tactic, but, as a user himself, he understands the power of addiction and the way it removes free will from the equation.

“In Southern California it didn’t make any difference anyhow where you went; there was always the same McDonaldburger place over and over, like a circular strip that turned past you as you pretended to go somewhere.”

Like Coca-Cola, “McDonaldburger” represents the fast, processed lifestyle embraced by the straights. It’s ubiquity and homogeneity are anathema to the counterculture that refuses to partake in its plastic culture. A Scanner Darkly raises a moral dilemma in its portrayal of 1970s California suburbia: Which is preferrable—the artificial, repressive world of the straights or the squalor, poverty, and addiction of the dopers? While Dick doesn’t advocate either side, he comes down unequivocally against addiction, seeing it as a choice rather than a disease.

“They did not want their family hassled by the Man, and he could get his head into that space, appreciate the validity of that.”

Arctor tries to infiltrate a New-Path rehab clinic in search of a prominent drug runner, but maintaining his cover identity is paramount. At the first sign of law enforcement, New-Path staff will take “evasive action” to protect their clients, even one who is there under false pretenses. Dick’s idiomatic prose not only expresses this idea, but it does it in a way that perfectly captures the cultural and historical context in which the novel was written.

“Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.”

As Arctor/Fred and Hank trade tragic stories of addiction—including mothers giving their babies heroin to “pacify” them—Arctor bemoans his emotional numbness. The outrage over such neglect—whether it be outrage at the users or at the system that has enabled them—would be preferable to the weary acceptance he feels now.

“This was Fred. But then later on Fred evolved into Bob Arctor, somewhere along the sidewalk between the Pizza Hut and the Arco gas station (regular now a dollar two cents a gallon), and the terrible colors seeped back into him whether he liked it or not.”

Arctor, posing as both an undercover agent and the subject of his own investigation, struggles to keep his various identities straight. As Arctor, he feels empathy for his friends and anger at a system that would leave them to die in the street. As Fred, he is a part of that system, reporting passively on the “junkies” he observes through his holo-scanner. If Donna were to die from some tainted Substance D, Fred would regard it as just another dead user, but for Arctor, her death would be emotionally devastating. As the narrative moves forward, reconciling these two identities becomes more and more difficult.

“It was like, he had once thought, a little plastic boat that would sail on forever, without incident, until it finally sank, which would be a secret relief to all.”

Arctor recalls his straight, pre-agency life—married with two daughters, a house in the suburbs—a life he despises, a life “without excitement, with no adventure” (49). Arctor faces the same moral dilemma Dick ponders in the novel: Which is preferable—a safe, predictable life or a life lived on the squalid fringes of society? Dick seems to argue that the latter, despite its unpredictability and excitement, is not worth the trade-off such a life can inflict.

“It was a wonder the local police hadn’t picked him up long ago on local disturbance-of-the-peace infractions. Maybe they were paid off. Or, most likely, they just didn’t care; these people lived in a slum-housing area among senior citizens and the other poor.”

Arctor checks on a user he hasn’t seen in over a month whose dealer has become violent, and he wonders why the man hasn’t been arrested. He realizes that societal neglect is probably the reason. When people who use drugs and are addicted to drugs are vilified as less than human, it becomes easy to rationalize brutality against them. Dick makes a keen observation about how society ignores marginalized communities because poverty and drug addiction are perceived as moral failings and violence is simply the outcome they deserve.

“IF I HAD KNOWN IT WAS HARMLESS/I WOULD HAVE KILLED IT MYSELF”

Arctor recalls a moment when a “straight” girl asks Barris and Luckman to kill a mosquito hawk despite the fact that they prey on mosquitos, which in turn can spread encephalitis. Her words become for them symbolic of the divide between the privileged straights and themselves. Her willingness to kill a creature that serves a useful purpose exemplifies for them the emptiness of her heart and, by extension, of straight society in general.

“He wondered how much of the insanity of the day—his insanity—had been real, or just induced as a contact lunacy, by the situation.”

Living with users and adopting their lifestyle, Arctor realizes, has warped his perception of reality. Conversations and interactions with Luckman and Barris take him down a well of paranoia, but Donna’s presence grounds him. Dick’s narrative takes readers into that psychedelic mind trip, allowing them to experience his characters’ “insanity” right along with them.

“How can days and happenings and movements so good become so quickly ugly and for no reason for no real reason?”

As Freck hangs out with Luckman and Arctor, he laments the “ugly” turn things have taken. What used to be mellow afternoons smoking weed and listening to music have become tense affairs with Barris on the verge of shooting his gun, arguments always brewing. In a broader sense, Dick seems to be commenting on the counterculture in general. What began as a movement of peace and love has taken a nasty turn—dangerous drugs on the streets, friends dying, incarcerated, or requiring extensive psychiatric care.

‘“Buy?’ She studied his face uncertainly. ‘What do you mean by buy?’”

Arctor questions Donna about her stealing and asks how many of her material possessions she’s actually paid for. The question seems to baffle her, as if paying for something has never entered her mind. It suggests an anarchic ethos among the user community—that the capitalist system is itself inherently corrupt and has taken so much from them, and so stealing from the system is not only fair but a moral obligation.

“I’m happy; aren’t you happy? I get to come home and smoke high-grade hash every night…it’s my trip. Don’t try to change me. Don’t ever try to change me. Me or my morals. I am what I am. And I get off on hash. It’s my life.”

Arctor and Donna debate different addictions—smoking versus shooting up, Substance D versus hash—and she defends her addiction as one that makes her happy. Smoking hash is such an inseparable part of her life, it has become her life, and she makes no apologies for it. She rationalizes her addiction by arguing that everyone is addicted to something, and she can’t imagine happiness in any other form than a hash pipe. It’s a moral choice and a zero-sum game: happiness with drugs versus misery without.

“Every junkie, he thought, is a recording.”

Arctor, observing Connie sleeping beside him, reflects on the rote physiological responses of someone addicted to drugs: Like a machine, their life is programmed by their addiction—eat, sleep, score drugs—and the cycle repeats endlessly, like a recording playing on a loop, until they are left with nothing but an almost biological imperative to find the next fix. For women like Connie, they have little recourse but stealing or sex work.

“Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo scanner like they use these days, latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself.”

Arctor’s paranoia and discomfort grow the more he thinks about being observed by the holo-scanners. Although he’s the one observing himself, he begins to imagine a shadowy “they” watching him; or rather an “it,” the scanner itself. Can it see into his soul? If it can, he wonders if it sees clearly or darkly (a riff on the biblical quote). He’s losing his ability to differentiate between observer and observed, and he hopes the machine can see through the morass created by the lying and the paranoia because he’s lost the ability to do it himself.

‘“Bob, you know something…’ Luckman said at last. ‘I used to be the same age as everyone else.’”

What appears to be an intuitively simple observation is in fact Luckman’s realization that time waits for no one, and that fact is especially pronounced for users. After years of addiction, Luckman and Arctor wake up to the inexorable passage of time, and they have little to show for it but a squalid house and years of navel gazing. It’s the regret of a generation who suddenly understand that they have aged out of their carefree youth and are facing expectations of maturity and responsibility.

“It is as if one hemisphere of your brain is perceiving the world as reflected in a mirror.”

As the agency’s psychiatric team diagnoses the state of Arctor’s brain, they explain that, rather than working cooperatively, the disconnected hemispheres are working independently, seeing the world in reverse. The philosophical implications are enormous. Arctor, seeing himself—his identity—reflected back at him doesn’t see his literal perception of himself (as one would see in a photograph) but backward, as he imagines he has seen the entire universe; or, as one evaluator explains, “Fred is seeing the world from inside out” (169), a distortion of space/time that suggests theoretical physics and precisely the kind of insight advocates of psychedelics highlight as a benefit.

“The mystery, he thought, the explanation, he means. Of a secret. A sacred secret. We shall not die.”

Dick uses the fictional examination of his protagonist’s brain to expound upon the metaphysical repercussions of opening “the doors of perception.” Arctor hears a voice claiming that “Death is swallowed up. In victory,” and that when “the writing appears backward” (170), as if reflected in a mirror, illusion shall be distinguished from truth. Dick seems to be referencing the power of the mind to perceive greater truths while in altered states of consciousness. It’s unclear whether those perceptions are profound truths or simply delusions evoked by brain-altering chemicals.

“In wretched little lives like that, someone must intervene. Or at least mark their sad comings and goings.”

After Luckman nearly chokes to death—and Barris blithely ignores him—Arctor realizes the importance of keeping diligent watch over his housemates. It is not only for their safety but, in a sense, to honor their lives. They—the entire community of the addicted—have been marginalized by mainstream society, forgotten as easily as yesterday’s news. Arctor sees value in marking their lives, sad though they may be, as distinctly human and worth remembering.

“Nobody held a gun to your head and shot you up. Nobody dropped something in your soup. You knowingly and willingly took an addictive drug, brain-destructive and disorienting.”

Arctor—as Fred—confers with Hank about his options after being removed from the case. Hank informs him that he is in violation of the penal code and will be fined for his drug use (to be taken out of his paycheck). When Arctor protests, Hank echoes the argument used by many who do not use drugs: taking drugs was a personal choice, and choices have consequences. It’s an argument that ignores many factors, such as personal circumstances, predisposition to addiction, and additives that can make drugs stronger and more addictive. It is also an argument that Dick has made after coming through the fire of substance abuse himself.

“It requires the greatest kind of wisdom, she thought, to know when to apply injustice. How can justice fall victim, ever, to what is right?”

Donna drives Arctor, in the throes of withdrawal, to a New-Path clinic for rehab. She pities the shivering husk of a man lying in her passenger seat. It would be so easy to alleviate his suffering by slipping him a hit of Substance D, but she knows she can’t do that. She must take the long, painful road of watching her friend exorcise the toxins from his body. The injustice not only of one addict’s personal pain but of an entire generation lured into addiction by the promise of something better is harsh wisdom indeed.

“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out.”

Arctor, sitting alone in the New-Path lounge, overhears other patients discussing the physical effects of addiction and withdrawal, similar to being comatose. It’s unclear if they are describing Arctor in their conversation or speaking generally, but the notion of awareness without active cognition or motor skills (a vegetative state) accurately describes Arctor toward the end of the novel as he is barely able to do more than repeat phrases and perform the simplest tasks.

“I prayed a long time ago, a lot, but not any more. We wouldn’t have to do this, what we’re doing, if prayer worked. It’s another shuck.”

When Mike, the agency’s informant inside New-Path, tells Donna to pray for a better outcome in the future, her cynicism shows through. Her job, which requires hiding her identity and deceiving friends, has taken its toll, leaving her with a hard-edged view of life. Praying for anything, she claims, is to fall prey to another of life’s scams.