35 pages • 1 hour read
Ubik
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
Runciter and Joe discuss their situation. Runciter claims that Joe and the inertials all died in the explosion, while Runciter is the sole survivor. He also believes that Pat and Hollis are behind much of what it is happening. Joe wonders why they would go through so much trouble, when they could have easily just killed them. He suspects that it is “an irresponsible entity that’s enjoying what it’s doing to [them]…killing [them] off one by one” (185).
Runciter goes on to reveal that Joe and the others are suspended in a half-life facility. Runciter, alive and well, speaks to them from the moratorium in Zurich. Pat too is in half-life with them. Joe responds to Runciter’s information by saying, “You don’t know any more than I do” (187). Joe accuses Runciter not knowing what Ubik is. Runciter concedes that he doesn’t really know what’s going on. Joe also concludes that there must be one entity trying to help him within half-life and another trying to destroy him. Runciter hangs up on Joe from the moratorium. Runciter wants to call Ella but fears that Jory might take over again. He thinks, “Maybe there’s never been anyone in half-life like Jory before” (192).
Chapter 15 Summary
Don Denny and a doctor enter Joe’s room. Denny tells Joe that the others are dying or dead, including Pat. Joe urges Denny to use the Ubik spray, which will prolong his life. When he does, he transforms into “an adolescent boy, mawkishly slender, with irregular black-button eyes beneath tangled brows” (195). Denny reveals himself to be Jory. Jory describes how he “eats” the half-lifers so that his energy levels will remain high; Jory did this to Joe while he was climbing the staircase. He also claims to have created the entire world around Joe but cannot stop things from regressing to earlier times. Joe tries to kill Jory, but Jory bites down on Joe’s arm. The Ubik protects Joe in this moment, but Jory escapes.
Chapter 16 Summary
Chip hails a taxi and asks the driver to drive him around town. He wants to test the limits of the world created by Jory. Joe sees “a pretty girl, with gay blonde pig-tails, wearing…a bright red skirt and high-heeled little shoes” (203). Joe convinces her to come to the restaurant with him. The woman hands him a secret envelope and reveals herself to be Ella Runciter, Glen’s wife. The envelope contains a certificate for “a lifetime supply of Ubik” (205). Ella has battled Jory for years, and she is almost ready to be reincarnated into her next womb. She hopes that Joe can become Runciter’s consultant when that happens. That’s why she protects him from Jory.
Ella brings Joe to the pharmacy and leaves him. He enters and realizes that the pharmacist is Jory. Jory has rendered the spray cans of Ubik unusable. Joe tries, however, to will the bottles back into the spray cans of the 1990s. It doesn’t work. As Chip leaves the pharmacy, he can feel his energy leave him again. A young woman approaches, claiming to be a scientist behind the formula for Ubik. She describes the formula and how it works. She says that his efforts before summoned her. She sprays Joe with Ubik and tells him to summon her again when he needs more.
Chapter 17 Summary
Runciter asks for his wife Ella to be brought in for consultation. He tips the technician who installed her digital consciousness in the office for his efficiency. The technician asks, “what kind of money is this?” (216). Runciter looks at the coin: “It was the first Joe Chip money he had ever seen” (216).
Chapters 14-17 Analysis
In the final chapters of the novel, Jory reveals himself as the true culprit behind the events taking place. While Hollis and Pat may have been responsible for the explosion on Luna, the sudden and quick decay of the inertials in half-life is due to Jory’s appetite and survival extinct. Jory created a world that decays rapidly but allows for generalized movement for all of his half-life victims, thereby making Jory’s victims believe they are not in half-life. Ubik, however, is a product created from within half-life to prevent entities like Jory from killing others. The mystery of the product throughout the novel is revealed and should help allow Joe to fend off Jory, while he tries to find a way to kill him.
The last chapter provides one final twist in the novel. Runciter receives a coin that is “the first Joe Chip money he had ever seen” (216). As the analysis of the earlier chapters indicates, Dick likes to leave the reader questioning their sense of reality, in the same way the characters do. The end of the novel suggests that everything revealed in the preceding chapters may be false, and that Runciter may be the one who is in half-life while the others are alive. Or perhaps all of them are dead and in half-life. Given the importance of dreams to the narrative, another interpretation is that every character is alive and dreaming. Readers may recall too that the first time the novel introduces Joe, he is in a state of recovery after a night of drug use. Maybe, then, the entire novel is Joe’s hallucination, and Ubik exists as a temporary antidote to his state of altered perception. Yet one more explanation—maybe the most troubling of all—is that the entire world as the characters know it is a constructed simulation, and their conception of God as Ubik and Satan as Jory are merely parts of that construct.
Dick makes no effort to definitively state which of these interpretations is “correct.” The point, rather, is arguably that human perceptions of reality must be questioned at every turn.
Unlock all 35 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Philip K. Dick
