The most impactful moment in the whole book, for me, occurred when the android Pris decided to cut off a spider’s legs because, as she said, “I think it doesn’t need all those legs…maybe four are enough (Dick, 81).” The scene caused Isidore to “experience a strange sense of terror” and caused me, as the reader, to feel a similar way (Dick, 81). ‘What,’ I wondered, ‘should I categorize the emotion that Isidore (and myself) was feeling as a result of the spider’s pain?’ After re-reading the Oxford definition of sympathy, empathy, and compassion, I realized that Isidore felt sympathy for the creature; defined as “an affinity between certain things, by virtue of which they are similarly or correspondingly affected by the same influence […] attract or tend towards each other (Course Anthology, 274M)” Isidore has never had his legs cut off physically, but metaphorically speaking he has been made, in his life, to feel like the spider does when Pris mutiliates it. He is a special, a chickenhead, is treated as a nuisance upon society, and is made to feel as if he has no worth. When Pris says of the spider, “is it worth something? It’ll die anyway” before testing to cut off its legs, one can draw almost an exact parallel to the way she and her friends viewed Isidore when they first moved into the apartments and debated killing him immediately. Isidore, though he himself may only make the connection between himself and the spider subconsciously, feels sympathy for the spider because they are experiencing like circumstances.
(A song covered by Marillion about sympathy that I think captures the word's true definition along with pictures that portray how important sympathy is in OUR world, especially at this present time. video courtesy of:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utsl2YeADZk&feature=related)
Another instance in the novel where these emotions play a key part is when Deckard believes himself to be Mercer. Though I was very confused as I read about Deckard climbing the hill and being hit by a rock, when he explained, “I am Wilbur Mercer; I’ve become one with him, and I’ve lost myself,” I recognized his experience to be a very literal example of empathy. We spoke a lot about what empathy is, exactly, during our last discussion of the novel in class, but we did not work so much do define what exactly it is. Again, according to the Oxford definition, empathy is “the power of projecting one’s personality into (and so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation (Course Anthology, 274L).” Deckard is an emotional wreck after killing six androids in one day, he is angry with himself for following Mercer’s allowance of those murders, and he ends up literally putting himself in Mercer’s shoes. He ends up living out the empathy box experience in real life, and experiences in turn real empathy, not empathy box-manufactured empathy. Whereas before the experience he found himself “withdrawn, removed, and separate” from the pain of Mercer as he walked up the hill, Deckard loses his abstract sense of Mercer’s journey when he himself is being pelted with rocks, living it (“Abstractions” website, 1). After the experience, he finds himself grateful for his unintentional empathy for Mercer because he realizes “I found the toad because I see through Mercer’s eyes (Dick, 100).” He also touches on the importance of empathy when he says, “Now that I’ve seen through Mercer’s eyes once, I probably won’t stop (Dick, 100). For, once we have true empathy for someone or something, it is hard to view any circumstances similar to our own without empathy. 
So, having identified instances of sympathy and empathy in the book – and defining their differences more clearly in my own mind – I had only to find a moment of compassion in the novel. I struggled with this definition the most, mostly because the definitions in the course anthology were extremely similar to those of sympathy. Then, I came across this defining: “the feeling when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it (Course Anthology, 274J).” That was it! Compassion, I realized, has a quality to it that the other two emotions I was analyzing did not – power. Many of my classmates may remember a day this semester when a lot had gone wrong for me. I came to class exhausted, crying, and fifteen minutes late. I knew my chances of actually walking into the classroom were slim, due to the fact that our Course Anthology clearly states that, “after six weeks have passed, the door will be closed for good when class starts […] and if anyone chooses to oen the door for someone who comes late, they will receive [points lost] (Course Anthology, 20).” However, after being initially turned away and sinking to the ground next to class in dismay at yet another thing that had gone wrong that day, I saw Katherine’s head peek around the now open door. “Spin, it’s okay, you can come in,” she said to me with a smile. I couldn’t believe it! Had she really opened the door for me, even knowing she would lose points as a result? In this instance, Katherine utilized compassion in that she felt sympathy for my experience and had the power to relieve it. 
(This late pass is an example of compassion a held by a teacher for a student - compassion is normally utilized in situations like the teacher-student relationship because it involves power. image courtesy of: http://parenting.leehansen.com/Printables/School/teacher-coupons.htm) In the novel, I had to look no further than the scene where Deckard decides against shooting Rachel, even after he finds that her reasons for sleeping with him were not genuine and sees that she is not with him to give help in the least. Though there are a lot of reasons to kill her, Deckard is stopped by her submission and acceptance of his shooting her and uses the power he has over her to save her life, rather than kill her.
Though I am not entirely sure what Dick’s novel was meant to prove symbolically and metaphorically in terms of applying it to our life, I did find myself extremely well-versed in the definitions of emotions like sympathy, empathy, and compassion and very in tune to my own experiences with these same emotions. I can only hope that we as a class continue to explore these themes, especially with regard to important events and issues in not-so-futuristic but equally complicated world in which we live.
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