The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is the second book I read by Philip Dick after Ubik. The novel’s dystopian undertone leaks continuously of the tragedies of the 1960s. Published in 1965, the novel was written amid the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights protests, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy. Perhaps influenced by ongoing challenges, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch presents a story saturated with anxiety, disorientation, and paranoia. However, beyond its dystopian presentation, the message of the novel evokes reflection upon perception, reality, identity, and human constructs.

Published four years before Ubik, the book displays a similar discussion of the emblem of reality and the transcendence of reality, the meaning of the existence of everyday men in non-everyday settings, and drug use and disorientation all occurring within a fictional dystopian world nearing collapse, but not yet. What makes The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch stand out, however, is the parallelism it draws between drug-induced illusions and religious experiences. By exploring concepts of reality and human construct through his characters located in a dystopian future, Dicks argues that perhaps the often painful physical existence is a versatile, perceived concept that can be transcended. 

The concept of reality, in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, is presented as a human construct that can and almost must be modified, changed, blemished. Sam Regan’s open reflection on the repetition of daily tasks suggests the need and possibility of manipulating the concept of reality, “You learn to get by from day to day [...] You never think in long terms. Just until dinner or until time for bed; very finite intervals and tasks and pleasures. Escapes.” Sam’s reflection reveals the mundane tasks of everyday life and the impossibility of finding meaning in such repetitions. Similarly, Leo Bulero notes that “after all, you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that.” For the characters in the novel, like Sam, their lack of dominance over their present realities necessitates manipulation of reality in favor of themselves. By changing the contrast of reality, freedom is achieved: “While translated one could commit incest, murder, anything, and it remained from a juridical standpoint a mere fantasy, an impotent wish only.” In a self-constructed reality, morality is flexible and the possibilities of behaviors are infinite. Welcome: Eldritch. 

The malleability of reality is on full display when Eldritch enters the story. This flexibility is most explicit when Leo remarks that “Eldritch showed up from another space.” The three stigmata of Eldritch – his artificial arm, teeth, and eyes – are “external, nonessential alterations, the arms, the eyes, the teeth – it’s not touched by any of these three, the evil, negative trinity of alienation, blurred reality, and despair that Eldritch brought back with him from Proxima. Or rather from the space in between.” Eldritch does not spring from reality, he is a concept appearing in physical form that springs from a space that transcends reality. 

The transcendence of reality is placed in parallelism with religious experiences. As Eldritch, the symbol of transcendence of reality, states, “I did not find God in the Prox system. But I found something better. God promises eternal life. I can do better; I can deliver it.” In this way, his existence is paired with religious experiences, the seeking of meaning through religion by implementing means that go beyond the physical construct of reality. Or, as the state of Sam, “he himself was a believer; he affirmed the miracle of translation—the near-sacred moment in which the miniature artifacts of the layout no longer merely represented Earth but became Earth. And he and the others, joined together in the fusion of doll-inhabitation through the Can-D, were transported outside of time and local space. Many of the colonists were as yet unbelievers; to them, the layouts were merely symbols of a world which none of them could any longer experience. But, one by one, the unbelievers came around.” Can-D becomes the means to make reality versatile and achieve enlightenment.

By probing the malleability of concepts of the self, identity, reality, and freedom, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch evokes reflections upon the meaning itself. Is meaning inherent or are they denoted by the self? Can meaning be defined? If so, how, and can it be changed? Eldritch’s three stigmata are not simply objects of alienation, they are symbols of the flexibility of reality and the possibility of manipulating or transcending it.