Monday, October 17, 2011

Week 7- Anita Ibell


What does Brown (2001) Identify as the central themes and concerns of The Man in the High Castle?

Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.”- Juliana Frink (Dick, 2001:1962)

According to Brown (2001), Philip K. Dick was obsessed throughout his literary career by the notion of the universe only being apparently real and the idea that an illusion might perhaps be dwelling behind the truth, biding time before it is to be exposed. He used sci-fi as a genre to explore metaphysics, the nature of perceived reality, good and evil and the abuse of power (pp.vii.) Dick explored these themes through characters that he had drawn from real life, as a way to show the affect such big themes can have on the individual. The individuals in The Man in the High Castle in my opinion, are effective expressions of the key themes because of their weaknesses. I think that maybe I see the characters as victims because of the awareness I had that they were unsuspecting pawns in a philosophical discussion of reality., therefore they were weak... If that makes sense?

The theme that swam around my head the most after reading this was the notion of perceived reality. There are indicators throughout the novel that ask us to think about what is truly real.Dick has presented us with an speculative work of an alternative history, in which Nazis and Japanese have turned the world into a totalitarian state and begs us to ask the question - what if the Allies didn't win the war? He has done the same for the characters in the novel, by putting a novel within a novel. The Grasshopper lies Heavy gives the characters speculation over what may have happened if, instead of the germans and Japanese, the Allies had won the war. There are other events and objects in the novel that explore this theme too. At one point, Robert Childan reaches an understanding that his 'genuine american artifacts' are indeed, fake. At a climatic point of the novel, Juliana Frink is told by the I Ching that her whole world might be based on a lie- that the Japanese and the Germans did, in fact, lose the war.. this is a hopeful message as she has become obsessed with the idealistic view that The Grasshopper Lies Heavy has presented her. (Brown, 2001) What we perceive as real can be changed so easily. The I Ching is another device used to show this. Again, Dick used it to determine the way that the text moved, but also inside the text to help the characters move forward. If the I Ching were to disseminate different messages than the ones used, how would the text be different? We don't know. Nor would we know any different if it had.

Personally, I found this novel pretty mind bending.

References:

Brown, E. (2001). Introduction. In Dick, P.K., The Man in the High Castle (p. v-xii). London: Penguin.

Dick, P.K. (2001: 1962) The Man in the High Castle. London: Penguin.

2 comments:

  1. I love reading novels where the idea of alternate history is involved, where a writer basically rewrites a part of history (possibly from the way they wish things had happened, or just to fit with the story). Dick himself has said of this novel "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real." If you liked this novel, I think you'd really like Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. Its about someone who wakes up in a parallel universe and no one knows who he is.

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  2. Oh cool, thanks! sounds like a book to add to my holiday reading list :)

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