The Father Thing

     Out of all the stories by Philip K. Dick that we read for this week, "The Father Thing" stood out to me the most. Despite how creepy the premise was, it was my favorite story to read out of the collection. However, I expected the ending of the story to be resolved by proving that the Father-Thing was just a  figment of Charles' imagination. Because of this, it took me a while to read the story within the science fiction genre.
     Yet, I feel like the reader automatically assuming Charles' imagination has gone wild lends itself to how the author emphasizes the idea that children are more perceptive and receptive than most adults think they are. In the beginning, the reader reads how Charles reacts like a patronizing parent, where we are amused and intrigued, but automatically disprove it in our own heads. However, as the story progresses, we revert ourselves into a child-like state of imagination and suspend our disbelief to root for Charles and his friends in his quest to rid his family of the Father-Thing once and for all. In relation to the themes we discussed in class, I also feel like the children in this story reflect an individualist collective that is a contrast of the idea of the full integration of technology (which is in this case, the bodysnatchers that don't raise a red flag for his mother and probably the other parents in the neighborhood). In fact, the idea of man vs. the other was a recurring theme in all the short stories, but manifested in very different ways. In this story, the use of child-like innocence and imagination provides an excellent example of that theme.