The Man In The High Castle

The Man in the High Castle

In the novel, The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick, America and it's allies lost World War II, and the former U.S.A. is now split up: Japan owning the West coast and Nazi Germany owning the East, with a sort of non-claimed “buffer” territory along the Rockies. The novel focuses on several characters, mainly residing in the Pacific States of America (PSA) and one living in the the buffer zone , going about their daily lives. Dick paints for us a very well-thought out alternate universe to our own. The Nazis have flown a man to Mars, can travel from Germany to San Francisco in 45 minutes by high-speed rocket, have drained the Mediterranean Sea for farmland, and have made slavery legal again. As we discussed
One of the characters, Frank Frink (who's real name is Frank Fink: a secret Jew) makes a living making and artificially aging Colt hand guns to sell as Civil War memorabilia. Because there is such a high demand for these pieces of Americana, there is of course, a quite lucrative market for fakes. Frank's boss, Wyndham-Matson, who owns the company that sells the fakes to retailers, has a conversation with his girlfriend about what makes an item have “historicity”. He has two Zippo lighters, one of which he claims to have been in Roosevelt's pocket when he was shot, and another identical one that was not. He asks her to see if she can tell which one it was by examining them, and of course, she cannot. This he uses as to prove his point that the item itself doesn't matter: it is in the “proof” (in his case, documentation) that gives an item value, or historicity. He explains, “'a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if it hadn't, unless you know. It's in here." He tapped his head. "In the mind, not the gun"' (Dick 64). Here we see Dick introducing the idea that things are only what we perceive them to be. If the identity, and henceforth, value of an item can change simply with a thought, or belief, then what we really value is what we think and believe. We may think a gun was
In the story, many of the characters read a banned, yet popular alternative-history novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, written by a man named Hawthorn Abendsen , who is rumored to live in a highly guarded house, a quintessential “high castle”. It is a fiction work that maps out world events if the Allies had won WWII, although, in a different strain of events than what really happened, thus presenting a third universe to us: the reader. The introduction of the third “universe” proposes the idea that there is more than just two options: more than just right and wrong, fake and real, authentic and fabricated. In the last pages, Juliana goes to see the author, after killing her lover, Joe, who turns out to be a spy sent by the Nazis to assassinate Abendsen. The I Ching, is an ancient Chinese book which the characters in the novel consult to check where they are flowing in the balance of the Dao, or the “way”, and how the outcomes of their decisions will pan out. Juliana wants to know if Abendsen consulted the I Ching when writing the book, and he reluctantly tells her that the Oracle practically wrote the novel, as he consulted it for every plot point, character and subject (something Dick actually did himself while writing this novel). Abendsen and Juliana ask the I Ching why it “wrote” The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. They toss the coins, come up with the hexagram, and realize it is the hexagram of Chung