The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle is a 1962 alternative history novel by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The novel is set in the United States, 15 years after the Axis Powers defeated the Allies in World War II and the U.S. submitted to German and Japanese military occupation.

While not the first piece of alternative 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

Without U.S. assistance, Great Britain and then the rest of Europe fell to the Axis Powers. The Japanese completely destroyed the U.S.’s Pacific fleet in a much more expansive attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S., ailing from years of economic distress, fell to the Axis and many important cities, such as New York, were destroyed.

By 1947, all Allies had surrendered to Axis control. The Eastern United States were placed under German control and the Western States under Japanese control. The Mountain States and much of the Midwest remained somewhat autonomous.

After Adolph Hitler was incapacitated by syphilis, 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. They also pursued space exploration and experienced the spread of new technology, such as television, through 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.

Storylines

• A spy from an anti-Nazi group travels to San Francisco under the cover of a Swiss trading merchant. He confers with Mr. Tagomi, head of the trade Japanese trade commission in the area, but must stall in pursuit of his true mission and avoid capture until the mysterious Mr. Yatabe arrives from Japan.
• 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.
• Robert Childon, proprietor of a San Francisco store selling American antiques and cultural artifacts that have become popular to the Japanese, tries to retain honor and dignity while catering to an occupying force. Although often sniveling in their presence and ambivalent in his own feelings towards the war, Childon eventually finds a sense of cultural pride. He also investigates widespread forgery within the antique market.
• Two San Franciscan industrial workers, Frank Frink and 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. Also Frink attempts to hide his Jewish ancestry from local police.
• Frink’s ex-wife Juliana, living in Colorado, begins a strenuous relationship with Joe, a truck driver who claims to be an Italian veteran of the war.
  

  The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

  
  Several characters in The Man in the High Castle read a popular, although banned, novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abdensen in which the Axis powers lost the war.

Afterwards, Abdensen speculated that the greatest world conflict would be an economic clash between Great Britain and the United States. U.S. exports became popular in China, which was under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek, and other parts of the world, allowing the U.S. to challenge the British’s traditional role of the world’s most influential nation. However, the U.K. ultimate overcame the U.S. and became once again the world’s supreme super power.

The book’s author, who is rumored to live in a highly guarded fortress, is the man after which Dick’s novel takes its title. Some fans speculate that Dick based Abdensen on fellow science fiction writer Robert Heinlein.

The Use of the I Ching

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

Themes

With this theme, Dick suggests the questions, who or what is the agent causing this penetration of reality? 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 Childon’s new confidence in American culture), and the effects of fascism 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.