Author: Philip K. Dick

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick shows how human beings yearn to be able to shape their reality the way they want by taking drugs such as Can-D and Chew-Z. Can-D allows them to live in these house dolls which they call “P. P. layouts.” By taking this drug, the characters get to inhabit these tiny worlds and take over the body of Perky Pat and her husband for a limited amount of time.

On the other hand, Chew-Z is a drug that causes you to travel to the past. A past that can alter the future if one travels multiple times to the the past in order to change it. The downside of this drug is that Palmer Eldritch which is the one who brought this drug out to the public seems to be in control of the worlds created by Chew-Z. The drug can also make you travel to the future and see what already happened or will happen.

As human beings, we are constantly experiencing a mix of feelings and emotions such anger, happiness, sadness, etc. We experience regret in life. We wish to be able to go back to the past and fix up our mistakes. Sometimes, we wish to be able to take a peek into the future and see how we are doing. There is no current way to do this. Nevertheless, when taking drugs or when we dream, we seem to transport to illusory places that could actually be our past, or future, or an alternate reality of our present.

“It takes a certain amount of courage, he thought, to face yourself and say with candor, I’m rotten. I’ve done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.” Philip K. Dick – The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Barney Mayerson is one of the main characters of the book. He is the perfect example of a man who seems to dwell in the past and wants to go back to fix it. Barney ended up choosing his work over his wife and he’s been regretful about that ever since. He is not very interested in the drug Can-D. However, when he takes Chew-Z and discovers that he can change the past, he goes off the rails. He lets himself go big time.

Leo Bulero is another character in the novel. He is Barney’s boss and the owner of the company which sells Can-D. Bulero also took Chew-Z, but the reaction was very different than Barney’s. He tries to sabotage Palmer Eldritch because Chew-Z is the new and main competitor of Can-D. When Leo Bulero took Chew-Z, he saw his future and all the things that will happen which constitutes a big portion of the story.

Both Mayerson and Bulero are clear examples of how humans are affected by past and future which leads me to believe that there might not be a present at all. The present is the limbo of the arrow of time. The present is quickly becoming our past and at the same time it drives us to the future. As humans beings, we are always trying to fix things that happen in the past and live repeating these past experiences over and over in our heads. We find ourselves some of the time entertaining and trying to concoct a plan to solve the maze of the past, and don’t realize that we are lacking the main part which is a door to the past.

With our future, we behave in similar ways. We might have an idea of what we want to become or where we want to be. However, future might never arrive, and if it does, it might not look how we picture it, so why do we become so stubborn and embrace it ?. I believe we live or at least our minds always live in a state of transition constantly jumping between past, present, and future.

“I mean, after all; you have to consider we’re only made out of dust. That’s admittedly not much to go and we shouldn’t forget that. But even considering, I mean it’s sort of a bad beginning, we’re not doing too bad. So I personally have fath that even in this lousy situation we’re face with we can make it. You get it?“ The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – PKD

Can-D and Chew-Z are a fundamental part of the story as well. Characters in the novel want to escape reality, so they “chew” these drugs. However, they never want to escape reality completely because reality has what they most yearn for whether it is a person, a thing, or anything else. They still want to take some of the aspects of what they yearn for in the real world, and bring them into these virtual worlds if it is unconsciously.

Some drugs just distort reality a bit and others take us to places that we never seen before. However, these totally new worlds stem from our minds because our body remains wherever we are. In theory, if we could get control of our mind in the way drugs affect our minds, we could travel to any world that we wish to construct.

In the same manner, when we dream, our deepest desires seem to construct illusory worlds that we get to inhabit. These worlds most of the time make no sense and seemed to be a mix of elements from our reality superimposed on the elements of the dream world. These worlds are so unpredictable and fleeting that when one least expects they’re gone. Is what we dream just an illusion or Is it a future or past reality that could have taken place or could take place?

“You learn to get by from day to day,” Sam Regan said sympathetically to him. “You never think in longer terms. Just until dinner or until time for bed; very finite intervals and tasks and pleasures. Escapes.” The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – PKD

As we go with our lives, we are constantly constructing other worlds that desire to live in. We call this “daydreaming”. By getting drunk, we wish to be bolder so that we can do what we can’t or don’t dare to do when we are sober. When we take any drug, we wish to lose ourselves, and let our minds take control freely from what we experience. However, our mind already knows what we yearn for, so obviously it would construct an alternate world with things that live in our mind.

This book might be considered to fall into the same category as the drugs described in the story. The story takes readers out of what we call reality and let us inhabit these constructed worlds created by Philip K. Dick.

As you read this book, you feel as if you’re in story but you’re constantly waking up to virtual worlds within virtual worlds. It feels like traveling within different layers of reality. Getting out of one will only get you to another, or make you realized that you never left the virtual world in the first place. The inception-like feelings of not being able to pinpoint the “real” world from the virtual and illusory worlds might be the main goal of the author in this novel.

Additional Resources:

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick (Audibook version)

Snippet of “Metz” Speech by Philip K. Dick (Video)

“Metz” Speech by Philip K. Dick (Written)

http://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin/PKDick.htm

If you want to learn more about PKD stories, and especifically The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. This site has an extensive source of reading material and alternate book covers for all of PKD’s books

http://www.philipkdickfans.com/mirror/websites/pkdweb/THE%203%20STIGMATA.HTM

Other Books by Philip K. Dick

Time Out of Joint

A Scanner Darkly

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