Faith is the driving force of life. Without faith, achieving anything is practically impossible. In Philip K Dick’s novel Ubik, the voice is convincing in terms of emotional power and in creating a deteriorating atmosphere of slow burning devotion. The narrator, Joe Chip faces several challenges where he has to follow the steps to figure out why the world is crumbling and exactly what it is that is still keeping him alive. Philip Dick constructs an incredible novel with the intentions of making ‘Ubik’ the savior of mankind. There can be no mistake that Philip K Dick is using Ubik as a metaphor for god. It establishes a sense of guide which may create a path to a new beginning.
One analyzing the novel may immediately wonder what “Ubik” is referring to and looking at it from a linguistic aspect, it comes from the word ubiquitous, “Ubik” means universal, everywhere, in other words, a divine being. Each passage in the novel starts with describing “Ubik” in different shapes and forms without exactly saying what it is. For instance, “Wild new Ubik salad dressing, not Italian not French but an entirely new and different taste that’s waking up the world. Wake up to Ubik and be wild! Safe when taken as directed” (36). “Not Italian, not French” refer to the concept that God, the divine right, does not have precise definition or origin. He is for every nationality, and for everybody. He is the one that’s “waking up the world”; this is directed toward how he is known as our father. He is there; ready to wake up everybody, to guide their day in the right direction. “Safe when taken as directed” is referring to the perception that people have. Majority of people have their own interpretation, and think they know exactly what God wants fro...
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...essentially by losing faith and hope.
Countless people are victims of losing hope and faith, in essence the divine right, God. When one loses faith, everything begins to deteriorate slowly, even the meaning of life. The readers begin to see such victims in Baltimore. An old lady waiting on line said, “It was dead”,
Works Cited
Drubach, Daniel A., and Daniel O. Claassen. "Perception And The Awareness Of God: The
Importance Of Neuronal Habituation In The Context Of The Jewish And Christian Faiths."
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Grzesik, Tadeusz. "Faith And Conscience--The Surest Of Arguments For The Existence Of
God." Forum Philosophicum: International Journal For Philosophy 17.2 (2012): 245-268.
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Marshall McLuhan, "The Medium Is the Message"
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Reynolds, David S. Faith in Fiction: The Emergence of Religious Literature in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.
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Hull, B. (2010). A reluctant prophet: How does professor Willard propose to take over the world? Journal Of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care, 3(2), 283-295.
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