The Man in the High Castle

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, 15 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.

While not the first piece of alternate history fiction, the novel defined that type of story as a genre of literature. 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 and one which deals the least with standard science fiction themes, such as technological innovation and interplanetary travel.

Plot

Back story

The point of divergence between the world of The Man in the High Castle and actual history is the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt 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 concerning the oncoming war.

Without U.S. assistance, Britain and then the rest of Europe fell to the Axis powers. Russia collapsed in 1941 and it was occupied by the Nazis, most of the Slavic people being 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. The U.S., ailing from years of economic distress, fell to the Axis with many important cities suffering great damage.

By 1947, 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 Southern United States was revived as a quasi-indepedent state (as a Nazi puppet state like Vichy France). The Mountain States and much of the Midwest remained autonomous, being considered unimportant by either of the victors, as well as a useful buffer. At the end of the war, the British leaders and generals were tried for war crimes (e.g. the carpet bombing of German cities) in a parallel of the Nuremberg Trials.

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 areas they controlled and mounting a massive genocide in Africa. However, unlike the Nazis, the Japanese had no policy of cleansing the occupied areas of unwanted races.

Nazi Germany continued their rocketry programs, so by 1962, they had a working system of commercial rockets used for inter-continental travel and also pursued space exploration, by sending rockets to the Moon and Mars. The novel also mentions television as being a new technology used in Germany.

Meanwhile Japan continued a more peaceful, but certainly not democratic rule, in much of Asia and territories in the Pacific Ocean. Like the United States and the Soviet Union after the actual World War II, the Japanese and the Germans are distrustful of one another.

During the novel, Martin Bormann dies and other Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich 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 colonising the solar system.

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.
Juliana Frink, Frank's ex-wife, is a teacher of judo.

Other characters are guided differently.

Robert Childan is the proprietor of "American Artistic Handicrafts", a store which 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, 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 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.

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, lead 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).
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.
Frank Frink and a friend, Ed McCarthy begin a jewelry business, creating some of the first authentic pieces of American art in several years. 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.
Frink's ex-wife Juliana, 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 German assassin. She attempts to leave, but Joe bars her way. Distressed beyond reason, she automatically slashes his throat with a razor she is holding, having contemplated suicide. She continues the journey alone and finally meets Abendsen, inducing him to reveal the truth about his novel.
Mr. Tagomi has a crisis of faith about the righteousness of the core principles of modern day Japanese and German society and his own Buddhist beliefs. When "Baynes" and "Yatabe" confer, he becomes further disturbed. Unable to think about the things he has heard, he finds solace in actions, first defending against Nazi agents who attempt to shoot Baynes, using his "fake" 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.

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

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 actual history, the novel portrays a third scenario. The novel is banned in areas under German occupation, but its publication is legal in the areas under Japanese occupation.

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), mitigates the bombing of Pearl Harbor by sailing the U.S.'s Pacific fleet, so the U.S. enters the war with more naval power.

In the novel the British contribution to victory is greater than in the historical scenario and the Russian and American lower. The turning points of the war are a British victory over Nazi troops under General Erwin Rommel in Africa, a British advance through the Caucasus and, in coordination with the remnants of the Russian army, a British victory at Stalingrad. As in the historical scenario, Italy turns against the Axis Powers. British tanks storm Berlin at the end of the war.

After the war, Britain, still led by Churchill, doesn't lose its empire and the U.S. exports mostly to China, under the democratic rule of Chiang Kai-shek. The British Empire remains racist while the U.S. solves its race issues by the 1950s, causing tension between the two superpowers.

Eventually, the U.S. challenges the traditional British role as the world's most influential nation. However, the British ultimately overcome the U.S. to become the world's supreme power.

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.

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. He even blamed the I Ching for plot details that he was unhappy with in one interview.

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. Abendsen, like Dick, used the I Ching to write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.

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. 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 45 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.
Although not describing the historical scenario, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, the book-within-a-book, portrays actual history more accurately than The Man in the High Castle itself.
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 mainfests 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 suggesting 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 actually lives in a normal house. He once lived in a fortified home, but realized that it was more of a prison. He allowed the fiction to continue, however.
At the novel's end, it is implied that a few characters, through consultation with the I Ching, discover that their world is fictional.
Mr. Tagomi seems to briefly become cognizant of the "real" world. By meditating on one of Frank Frink's creations, a small pin which contains Wu/Satori, a form of inner truth, he finds himself briefly transported to an unfamaliar San Francisco. This version has the Embarcadero Freeway, suggesting that it is in our reality.

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 the limiting, backwards-looking obsession with nostalgia and antiquities), and the effects of fascism and racism on culture (throughout the novel, especially sections in dealing with the lack of value of life in the wake of Nazi dominance of the world, and the race superiority and racism that several characters - Japanese, American and German - occasionally indulge in).

The idea of Nazi Germany winning World War II, is also explored in Fatherland by Robert Harris, SS-GB by Len Deighton, and in an episode of The Original Series: The City on the Edge of Forever.

Trivia

A type of mood-altering marijuana cigarette in the alternate universe of San Francisco is called "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."
Phil later explained that he got the idea for this book from reading "Bring the Jubilee", by Ward Moore, a 1953 alternate history novel in which the Confederacy won the civil war.

Sequel

Dick revealed in a 1976 interview ^* 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 for 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. 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, Phil 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.

External links

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