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Similarities Between Blade Runner And Arrow Of God

Decent Essays

There are many themes, symbols, and patterns that appear repeatedly in works of fiction. Many of these appear to be universal, pervasive across time and culture. This paper will serve to compare and contrast patterns of fiction, archetypes, and philosophies found within two works of fiction. Arrow of God, a novel by Chinua Achebe, is about an African priest, Ezeulu, and his struggle with maintaining unity within his village during the British colonization of Africa during the 1920's. The film Blade Runner is a work of science fiction in which robotic humans, known as replicants, have been banned from Earth. The film follows Rick Deckard, a retired police officer, as he hunts down and kills three replicants that have recently escaped to a dystopian …show more content…

According to this philosophy, a society which has advanced technologically further than another is inherently better and therefore has a right to rule (Wilkins). The most visible philosophy found in Blade Runner is that known as existentialism. The film brings forth many questions surrounding the meaning of human life, and exactly what constitutes human life to begin with. Within existentialism, a human exists first, and determines for him or herself what the meaning of that existence might be. Even though the replicants appear to be fully human, and are even capable of developing complete human emotion given a long enough lifespan, the fact that they are created for a purpose, thereby having an essence before their existence, could be what excludes them from being truly human according to existentialism. The use of existentialist philosophy in Blade Runner is much more obscure and less obvious than the philosophy of social Darwinism employed by Achebe in Arrow of God. The viewer is forced to thoroughly consider the hidden meanings and metaphors within Blade Runner to really appreciate the questions of existentialism is poses. Both pieces of fiction contain similar themes, but the main philosophies in both are quite different and presented in very different

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