Ethical Behavior In William Gibson's Burning Chrome

Evidence of such unethical behavior can be examined in the short story William Gibson and Michael Swanwick’s Dogfight from William Gibson’s novel Burning Chrome. In this story, the main character, Deke, steals a brain-enhancing drug from his girlfriend and then kills her. He engages in unethical behavior stemming from his selfishness. In Octavia Butler’s Speech Sounds, a society without any form of communication between people leads to more violent encounters due to a lack of any way to convey logic or reason. More violent encounters leads to normalization of violence, which leads to forced selfishness and an ignorance of any sort of ethics. In these two stories, one can clearly see the correlation between unethical behavior and selfishness.

Deke’s behavior in Dogfight was not ethical for a multitude of reasons.

Throughout the story, he fosters a close emotional relationship with Nance. Nance’s brain block shows the strength of their relationship; even though they are unable to have any true sexual or physical interactions, they still maintain the other aspects of a romantic relationship. True love is never easy to find, and their circumstances make it seem even more unlikely. Nance grew up wealthy and is on track for an extremely profitable career, and Deke is a broke and homeless career shoplifter. Their contrasting childhoods and current situations make it seem very unlikely that they would ever cross paths, so you would expect Deke to value their relationship highly. He does at first, evident by his use of the teddy bear to make her feel happy without the use of physical contact. However, this does not last. The decline of this relationship’s worth in respect to Deke begins to appear noticeably during a specific encounter with Nance. After Nance first mentions that she obtained two dosages of “hype” and that she is interviewing for a full-time job, he immediately changes his attitude. These two facts are certainly responsible for Deke’s actions. When she starts dancing with excitement and taking her clothes off, Deke is uninterested and decides that he’s “gotta go home and jerk off” (Gibson and Swanwick, 167). This shows that Nance’s brainlock is starting to become something that actively bothers Deke, so

has to take out his sexual frustration by masturbating to thoughts of her. This is demeaning to Nance and is evidence that Deke is starting to see her more as an object for his own use than as a romantic partner. Further proof of this can be found in the very next line, in which Deke wonders “where she’d hidden that second hit.” (Gibson and Swanwick, 167) Now Deke is using her as a means to further his skill in the dogfight video game he’s so obsessed with. Deke is now bordering on some downright lunatic behavior. The next time Deke sees Nance, he kills her for the last hit of hype. Placing your skills in a video game above the success and life of your girlfriend goes against almost anybody’s code of ethics; however, this case is unique because Deke obviously has wickedly flawed morals.
Deke’s behavior in Dogfight is unethical because he was acting selfishly. When he sees Tiny playing “Spads and Fokkers” for the first time, he is mesmerized. So much so, in fact, he decides to abandon his plan to travel to Florida so he can stay and get better at that game. His obsession only grows as he gets better because of his training and Nance’s new technology. His obsession with the game is also linked to his obsession with Tiny. The storyline between Deke and Tiny sheds light on Deke’s competitive nature, which stems from his selfishness. After Deke lost his first game to Bobby Earl, he “burned with anger and humiliation.” (Gibson and Swanwick, 162) As soon as Deke sees Tiny for the first time, all he wanted to do was beat him in the video game. The whole purpose of him training was so he could eventually defeat Tiny, the man whose entire life was devoted to this game. However, the most selfish part Deke’s actions was how important Nance’s last hit of hype was to her. Nance was just about done with her entire academic career, and she was about to get a job using the last hit of hype. This is possibly the most important moment of Nance’s life; everything she had worked for her entire life was hinging on her job interview. Success would mean she would be rich and happy for the rest of her life. When Deke killed her and took the hype, he was literally throwing out her entire life just because he thought she would leave him when she got the job. By thinking aloud “the bitch is planning to leave me anyway,” (Gibson and Swanwick, 170) Deke is admitting to himself that if she isn’t in his life, she might as well be dead. This shows his selfishness and his true disregard for anyone’s feelings besides his own. This dark and twisted turn had a profound effect on the authors of this story. When Michael Swanwick was asked during an interview about Gibson’s opinions on Dogfight, he felt it was “a complete success but I don’t think [Gibson] likes it.” (Santala) This story is much darker than any of Gibson’s other stories that have been assigned for class, so writing this story may have affected him differently than his other works. Gibson felt bad about himself for creating such a story, which goes to show how powerful the themes of selfishness and loneliness are in this story. When Deke takes the hype and he finally beats Tiny in the game, he feels nothing. He killed his girlfriend and beat an old war veteran at the only thing the poor man had left in his life. Only at the end of the story does Deke realize the degree of his selfishness, and as a result, he realizes how lonely he truly is.
In Octavia Butler’s Speech Sounds from her collection Bloodchild and Other Stories, we are exposed to a world where selfishness becomes a necessity and unethical behavior becomes the norm.

In a society where most people are physically unable to speak, read, or understand speech, people suddenly have almost no way to communicate with each other. This led to a collapse in society in which colossal changes were made to the fabric of society itself. At one point in the novel, Rye mentions that “People might very well stand by and watch if he tried to rape her. They would also stand and watch her shoot him.”(Butler, 95) In this world, it is perfectly normal to see a woman getting raped across the street, or a fight ending in death. Because there is no way to solve issues via communication, interactions can often become violent quickly. Because violence is so commonplace in this society, most people do their best to just avoid any sort of violence completely, even if that means them being a bystander while watching another person die. While this society does foster unethical behavior and selfishness, it’s truly the safest way for it to operate. Most people in this society probably wouldn’t be able to prevent a large man from robbing and killing an old woman, so they don’t do anything. If they did attempt to intervene, however, there is still an enormous risk that they would die or be seriously injured in the process. In this society, it’s not a matter of what is the “right” or

“wrong” thing to do; but it is a matter of life or death. It just isn’t worth risking your life to save someone else, especially if you can’t even communicate with them. The lack of an ability to convey thoughts using language in this society directly affects the amount of violence, and the amount of violence in turn directly affects people’s willingness to intervene when they witness violence. When examining a research paper about childhood abuse in inner-city crack users, I found that “respondents viewed their ongoing physical assaults as an ordinary part of their childhood and adolescence.” (Dunlap et al.) This psychology-based source shows that the normalization of violence does in fact occur when people are exposed to it enough.
William Gibson and Michael Swanwick’s Dogfight, depicts the story of a man that let his selfishness get to him so much that he committed some very unethical behavior. By the end of the story, all he feels is loneliness and regret. In Octavia Butler’s Speech Sounds, we observed a society where ethical behavior is nearly meaningless. Ethical behavior is the basis of society today. Part of what makes our world work is that when a person walks outside, they are able to trust that nobody around will intentionally hurt them. Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world, but the majority of Earth can wake up and not be scared for their death. That’s why I’m relieved I’m not a character in these novels.