In Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, Rick Deckard must kill the androids that have fled to Earth. Through the changes in the elements of Rick, the worlds and how they differ between the book and film can be explored. The literary world focuses on how beings survive in the post-apocalyptic world, whereas the film world is merely a changed society from the migration. While the novel shows that the world is harsher through the conditions of Rick, the film world is more standard and asserts that Rick is less human and vulnerable, this difference in Rick changes the message of humanity, as the novel explores how humanity survives in the bitter climate, the film’s lesson…show more content… Nuclear fallout slowly kills all of Earth’s inhabitants, and people have begun to degenerate until they are sub-human chickenheads. Iran and Rick are stuck on Earth due to Rick’s job, so their future is hopeless and the only way to live happily is with the mood organs. In contrast, filmic Rick drinks to forget his troubles. Rick is nearly always drinking, but it became apparent that it is not healthy once he went directly to a bar after killing Zhora (the literary Luba Luft equivalent). Rick gazes upon her corpse in the rain for a few minutes, and then promptly walks to a bar and orders an alcoholic beverage. Both Ricks drown out their pain and absolve their guilt through reliance on an item; however, literary Rick’s circumstances seem more dismal, so his item is more extreme. In the film, the subplot of the nuclear fallout is absent and Rick’s only problem is his guilty conscious for retiring the androids/replicants, so he drinks to forget. However, literary Rick is completely hopeless about his lack of a future, while he simultaneously feels subconsciously guilty for killing androids, so he must not only forget his emotions, but create artificial emotions in order to have the will to live. The different coping mechanisms of the Ricks reflect the state of the world around them; they demonstrate how the literary world is bleaker in comparison to the filmic