The Man in the High Castle

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The Man in the High Castle
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	Philip K. Dick
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Alternate history
Publisher	Putnam
Publication date	1 January 1962
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	239 pp
OCLC	145507009

The Man in the High Castle is a 1962 alternate history novel by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The novel is set in the former United States, in 1962, fifteen years after the Axis Powers defeated the Allies in World War II and the U.S. surrendered to Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.^[1]

While not the first piece of alternate history fiction, the novel helped to define this type of story as a serious literary genre. It won the prestigious Hugo Award and helped make Dick well-known in science fiction circles. It is one of Dick's most tightly-structured and character-focused novels^{[citation needed]} — he spent most of his life writing to pay bills, and so wrote quickly. This was the only novel for which he had the luxury of writing several drafts.

[edit] Plot summary

[edit] Back story

The Man in the High Castle's point of divergence from our own world occurred when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated in 1933. He was succeeded by Vice President John Nance Garner, who was subsequently replaced by John W. Bricker. Neither man was able to revive the nation from the Great Depression, and both clung to an isolationist policy regarding the approaching war.

The USSR collapsed in 1941 and was occupied by the Nazis, while most of the Slavic peoples were exterminated. The Slavic survivors of the war were confined to "reservation-like closed regions". The Japanese completely destroyed the United States' Pacific fleet in a much more expansive attack on Pearl Harbor. Due to Japan's expanded military capabilities, it was able to invade and occupy Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and the Southwestern Pacific in the early forties. After this, the United States fell to the Axis, with many important cities suffering great damage.

By 1948, Allied forces had surrendered to Axis control. The Eastern Seaboard was placed under German control while California and other western states ceded to Japanese rule. The Rocky Mountain States and much of the Midwest remained as a buffer. The German Reich and Empire of Japan are now the chief superpowers, rival to one another in their wold domination.

After Adolf Hitler was incapacitated by syphilis, the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, Martin Bormann, assumed the leadership of Germany. The Nazis created a colonial empire and continued their mass murder of races they considered inferior, murdering Jews in the puppet United States and other areas they controlled and mounting massive genocide in Africa.

Nazi Germany continued their rocketry programs, so that by 1962, they had a working system of commercial rockets used for intercontinental travel and also pursued space exploration, by sending rockets to the Moon, Mars and Venus. In a remarkable presage of later, real-life NASA concepts, PKD describes the Nazis "..bustling robotic factories across the solar system". The novel mentions television as being a new technology used in Germany. The Japanese Empire is portrayed as being behind the Third Reich in technological development.

During the novel, Martin Bormann dies and other Nazis, such as Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich (whose real-life assassination was foiled in the novel), challenge to become Reich Chancellor (German: Reichskanzler). Various factions of the Nazi party are described as either seeking war with Japan or being more interested in colonizing the solar system.

[edit] Characters

Rather than present a linear story, the novel follows each of its characters as they pursue their lives. There are connections between them, some direct, some indirect, and some barely perceptible. Three of the main characters use the I Ching to guide their lives:

• Nobusuke Tagomi is a representative at the Japanese Trade Mission in San Francisco.
• Frank Frink (born Fink) initially works at the Wyndham-Matson Corporation, a company specializing in reproduction (i.e. fake) Americana from the quaint old days when it was an independent nation. He is Jewish, but keeps his ethnicity hidden to prevent arrest and death.
• Juliana Frink, Frank's ex-wife, is a teacher of judo.

Other characters don't use the I Ching, and have different belief systems:

• Robert Childan is the proprietor of "American Artistic Handicrafts", a store that sells antique Americana to collectors, mostly Japanese. Childan obtains some of his stock from Wyndham-Matson Inc. but believes these items to be genuine. Because he deals with Japanese people, Childan has adopted Japanese manners, Anglicized versions of Japanese modes of speech, and even thought patterns similar to the Japanese. Tagomi is one of Childan's best customers, both for himself, and for gifts he "grafts" onto visiting businessmen.
• Wyndham-Matson himself, Frank's boss, appears briefly to muse on the difference between a real antique and a reproduction, and to introduce, via his girlfriend, the novel "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy".
• "Mr. Baynes", actually Captain Rudolf Wegener of Reich Naval Counter-Intelligence, is travelling to meet Mr. Tagomi, expecting to meet an important Japanese representative through him. He is taken aback when Tagomi greets him and gives him a gift of a "genuine Mickey Mouse watch", which he has bought from Childan.

[edit] Storylines

The Man in the High Castle has no one central plot but rotates between several somewhat interconnected storylines:

• "Mr. Baynes" travels to San Francisco under cover as a Swedish trading merchant. He confers with Mr. Tagomi, but must stall in pursuit of his true mission and avoid capture until the mysterious Mr. Yatabe arrives from Japan. Yatabe is actually General Tedeki, formerly of the Imperial General Staff. The real mission is to warn the Japanese that a faction of the Nazis led by Joseph Goebbels has a plan (Operation Löwenzahn/Dandelion) to use nuclear weapons against the Japanese Archipelago (known as the "Home Islands" within the book); Mr. Baynes (actually an agent of the German Abwehr) is to persuade the Japanese to support Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Sicherheitsdienst and the SS, against Goebbels.
• Frank Frink and his friend Ed McCarthy begin a jewelry business, creating beautiful, original pieces of American art. Their works have a strange effect on the Americans and Japanese who view them. Frink attempts to hide his Jewish ancestry from local police, but is arrested after he attempts to sabotage Wyndham-Matson's business by telling Childan that the items he sells are fakes.
• Mr. Tagomi, unable to think about the things he has heard, finds solace in actions. He defends against Nazi agents who attempt to shoot Baynes, using his "authentic" Colt Army revolver which he bought from Childan; then he retaliates against the local Nazi authorities by directing that Frank Frink, who is scheduled for deportation, be released. Tagomi never meets Frank, nor does he know that he is the creator of the beautiful artwork that has made such an impression on him. However, as a devout Buddhist, he is tortured by the moral and existential implications of taking human life deliberately, and suffers a heart attack.
• Frink's ex-wife, Juliana, who is living in Colorado, begins a relationship with Joe, a truck driver who claims to be an Italian veteran of the war who wishes to meet the titular Man in the High Castle, Hawthorne Abendsen, author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. She travels with him, but discovers that Joe is actually a Swiss assassin. She attempts to leave, but Joe bars her way. Distressed beyond reason, she automatically slashes his throat with a razor she is holding due to her contemplation of suicide. She continues the journey alone and finally meets Abendsen, inducing him to reveal the truth about his novel.
• Robert Childan tries to retain honor and dignity while catering to an occupying force. Although often obsequious in their presence and ambivalent in his own feelings towards the war and his occupiers (whom he both loathes and respects alternately), Childan eventually finds a sense of cultural pride. He also investigates widespread forgery within the antique market amidst the increased Japanese interest in 'genuine' Americana.

[edit] The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

Cover of 1981 Berkley Books edition of The Man in the High Castle. Cover art by Richard M. Powers.

Several characters in The Man in the High Castle read a popular novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a novel within a novel. The author, Hawthorne Abendsen, describes an alternate history in which the Axis Powers lost the war. Although closer to our own history, the novel portrays a third scenario. The novel is banned in areas under Japanese occupation and officially banned in areas under German occupation (it's actually widely read throughout the Pacific), but its publication is legal in the neutral countries.

In Abendsen's novel, Roosevelt survives the assassination attempt but does not run for reelection in 1940. The next president, Rexford Tugwell (who, in 'our' reality, never ran for the presidency), removes the U.S. Pacific fleet from Pearl Harbor, saving it from the Japanese attack and hence ensuring that the U.S. enters the war with greater naval power.

In the novel, the United Kingdom retains much of its military and industrial strength and makes a greater contribution to the Allied cause than it did in our world. This alternative Second World War is determined by several pivotal events. As in our own world, one of them is British victory over Erwin Rommel in Northern Africa, but in Grasshopper's alternative world, there is a British advance through the Caucasus and, after surviving Soviet troops join them, British and post-Soviet forces win a victory at Stalingrad. As in the historical scenario, Italy turns against the Axis Powers. British tanks storm Berlin at the end of the war, much as the Red Army did in our own world.

After the war, Winston Churchill still leads Britain. Due to its greater military and industrial strength, the United Kingdom doesn't lose its empire and the United States has a strong trade relationship with China, as Chiang Kai-shek and Nationalist forces defeat Mao in this universe. The British Empire becomes racist while the U.S. solves its race issues by the 1950s, which causes tension between the two superpowers.

Eventually, as in our own Cold War, two superpowers struggle for global hegemony, but both are capitalist, liberal, democratic societies. However, the British ultimately overcome the United States, and become the dominant superpower of this world.

The book's author, Hawthorne Abendsen, is rumored to live in a highly guarded fortress; his nickname is "the Man in the High Castle," from which the novel itself is named.

The title of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy comes from Ecclesiastes 12:5.

[edit] Use of the I Ching

Dick claims that he wrote The Man in the High Castle, using the ancient Chinese philosophical text the I Ching (or Book of Changes) to decide on plot development. In one interview he even blamed the I Ching for plot details with which he was unhappy."When it came to close down the novel, the I Ching had no more to say. So there's no real ending on it. I like to regard it as an open ending."

The I Ching is featured throughout The Man in the High Castle. It spread through the Pacific States after the Japanese began their occupation. Several characters, both Japanese and American, consult it for important decisions. Like Dick in our world, Hawthorne Abendsen used the I Ching to write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy in his timeline.

At the end of The Man in the High Castle, Juliana Frink in Hawthorne's Abendsen's presence asks the I Ching why it wrote The Grasshopper Lies Heavy and what people are supposed to learn from that novel. The I Ching responds with the hexagram Chung Fu - Inner Truth; The Grasshopper Lies Heavy describes the true state of the world; all of the characters in The Man in the High Castle are experiencing a false reality.

[edit] Major themes

The most prominent theme in The Man in the High Castle is the question of the penetration of true reality into a false reality. This can be seen in several aspects of the novel.

• Robert Childan discovers that many of his antiques are fakes and becomes paranoid that his entire stock consists of counterfeits. This is a common theme for Dick, for example, the androids in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?. He sometimes causes counterfeits to become real, but in this case the "counterfeiting" is so good that it calls into question the meaning of "real". For instance a counterfeit Colt .44 is indistinguishable from a genuine antique by all except an expert. It is also functional, as Mr. Tagomi demonstrates.
• Frank's former boss, himself a collector, has a Zippo lighter which is documented to have been in FDR's pocket when he was assassinated. He compares this to an identical lighter for his girlfriend, inviting her to "feel the historicity". Of course his fortune rests on producing counterfeits.
• Several characters are spies, traveling under false names and pretenses. Even Frank Frink is using an assumed name, the real one being "Fink", regarded as a Jewish name.

Cover of 2001 Penguin Classics edition of The Man in the High Castle. Cover art by James P. Keenan.

• Although not describing our own alternative world, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, the book-within-a-book, does refer to a third alternative world where the Axis lost the Second World War, and the Allies won, albeit with an alternative sequence of events.
• The jewelry made by Frink and McCarthy more closely resembles actual '60s American folk art, rather than Japanese or German works. The connection between these pieces and a deeper reality manifests itself through the effect the pieces have on several characters.
• The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is essentially the alternate history counterpart of The Man in the High Castle in that, to the characters inhabiting the fictional world, the world of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is the fiction. This implies the penetration of two false realities, and suggests that even the idea of two realities, true and false, is incorrect and that there are multiple realities.
• The Man in the High Castle of the book's title lives in a normal house. He once lived in a fortified home, but realized that it was more of a prison. He allowed the myth about his isolation to continue, however.
• At the novel's end, Hawthorne Abendsen and Juliana Frink consult the I Ching, and discover that their own world is fictional.
• Mr. Tagomi seems to briefly become cognizant of our own alternative world. After he meditates on one of Frank Frink's creations, a small pin which contains Wu/Satori, a form of inner truth, he is briefly transported to an unfamiliar San Francisco. This version has an Embarcadero Freeway, and Caucasians do not defer to those of Japanese descent, indicating that he has experienced either our own alternative world, or one very much like it — he might also be experiencing the America of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.

With this theme, Dick suggests the questions, who or what is the agent causing this inter-penetration of realities? And why does that agent desire that this reality be known as an artifice? This theme is addressed further in several subsequent Dick novels, including Ubik, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, and VALIS.

The Man in the High Castle also deals with themes of justice and injustice (through Frink's fleeing from Nazi persecution), gender and power (through Juliana's relationship with Joe), shame and identity (through Childan's new confidence in American culture from his limiting, backwards-looking obsession with nostalgia and antiquities), and the effects of fascism and racism on culture (throughout the novel, especially sections that deal with the lack of value of life in the wake of Nazi dominance of the world, and assumptions of ethnic superiority and racism that several Japanese, American and German characters occasionally indulge in).

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• In Japanese-dominated San Francisco, Frink smokes a mood-altering marijuana cigarette branded as "Heavenly Music." This term was used as the name of a track on an album by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp called No Pussyfooting. The track is called "The Heavenly Music Corporation."
• Dick later explained that he got the idea for this book from reading Bring the Jubilee, by Ward Moore (1953), which is set in an alternative United States and twentieth century, after the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War in the 1860s.
• In his "Acknowledgements" section, Dick cites several other influences. In particular, he acknowledges the work of eminent World War II historian William Shirer, and his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (London: Secker and Warburg: 1960). Other useful World War II titles used were Alan Bullock's Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (Pelican Books: 1962), Louis P. Lochner's translation of the Goebbels Diaries (Doubleday, 1948) and Paul Carrell's Foxes of the Desert (MacDonald, 1960). In the case of the I Ching, he refers to Richard Wilhelm's Bollingen translation (1950).
• There are two references to traditional Japanese poetic forms in the Acknowledgement. Donald Keene edited the first volume of the Anthology of Japanese Literature (Grove Press, New York: 1955), from which a haiku is cited (p.48), while a waka (page 135) is taken from Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture (New York: Pantheon: 1955). W. Y. Evans-Wentz provided the translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Oxford University Press: 1960).
• Mr. Baynes refers to Cary F. Baynes the original translator of the I Ching into English, published by the Princeton University Press, 1967.
• Mr. Baynes also sings "the Erlking" ("Der Erlkönig" in German):

Wer reitet so spät,

Durch Nacht und Wind?

Es ist der Vater

Mit seinem Kind.

Translation:

Who rides so late,

Through the night and wind?

It is the father

With his child.

[edit] Sequel

Dick revealed in a 1976 interview [1] that he planned to write a sequel to The Man in the High Castle: "And so there's no real ending on it. I like to regard it as an open ending. It will segue into a sequel sometime." He stated that he "started several times to write a sequel" but never got far because he was too disturbed by his original research for The Man in the High Castle and couldn't stand "to go back and read about Nazis again."

He also suggested that the proposed sequel would be a collaboration with another author: "Somebody would have to come in and help me do a sequel to it. Someone who had the stomach or the stamina to think along those lines, to get into the head; if you're going to start writing about Reinhard Heydrich, for instance, you have to get into his face. Can you imagine getting into Reinhard Heydrich's face?"

Two chapters of the intended sequel were published in a collection of essays about Dick, called The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (ISBN 0-679-74787-7). In these chapters, it is revealed at a meeting of the highest Nazi officials that the Gestapo has made visits to a parallel world in which their bid for world conquest was defeated. More importantly, scientific superweapons exist in that world for the taking, including a bomb of awesome capability. (But here, the manuscript ends abruptly.)

The title of the proposed sequel was at one point said to be Ring of Fire, and would detail the emergence of a hybrid Japanese/American culture that arose as the two distinct groups merged over time.

On one occasion, Dick said that his novel The Ganymede Takeover originally started out as a sequel to The Man in the High Castle which simply would not take shape. Specifically, the Ganymedians occupying Earth in the novel started out as Japanese occupying the United States.

[edit] Other examples of Nazi victory fiction

(See also below) Nazi/Axis global domination was first explored in Katharine Burdekin's 1937 dystopia, Swastika Night, and also in Fatherland by Robert Harris, "The Last Article" by Harry Turtledove, SS-GB by Len Deighton, Making History by Stephen Fry and in the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever," based on an original script by Harlan Ellison. Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream was set in an alternative world where Hitler emigrated to the United States and became a fantasy author, creating a fascistic fantasy novel entitled Lord of the Swastika. In this world, the absence of Nazism led to communist revolutions throughout Western Europe without a Second World War, leading to US/Japanese alignment against a rapacious Greater Soviet Union. Phillip Roth's 2004 novel The Plot Against America also explores an alternate history in which Nazism insinuates itself into America. An even longer list appears in Jakubowski & Edwards "The Complete book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists"^[2]

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] See also

• 1945
• Collaborator
• Fatherland
• In the Presence of Mine Enemies
• The Iron Dream
• It Happened Here
• Making History
• The Plot Against America
• The Sound of His Horn
• SS-GB
• Swastika Night
• The Ultimate Solution
• Amerika (TV miniseries)
• The Children's War

[edit] External links

• Review and analysis
• Review and analysis
• "The World Hitler Never Made"
• The Man in the High Castle cover art gallery
• World map showing territories as described in the book