Week 8- Anita Ibell

How does Dick's essay (1999; 1964) illuminate his use of Nazism as a motif in High Castle?

The Man in the High Castle's narrative is heavily focussed on the fascism that the Nazis employ to run the world of the text- including their anti-semantic views. According to Dick, (1999; 1964) Nazism is truly the focus of the novel, and serves to show how we are still very much fascinated and disgusted by the Nazis. In his essay he states that “Phobia is phobia. It springs, as Freud and Jung and H.S Sullivan showed, from the depths of the self unknown to the self.” I think from this that it could possibly be taken to mean that Nazism has been used as a motif for fear. Fear is then shown as a pre-cursor to unhappiness which ultimately leads to limited progress as a race, and an individual because fear is a way in which the self is repressed from bigger, universal ideas. I thought some of the characters in the text to be quite racist, especially Robert Childan who seems to admire the Nazis and at one point says; "We live in a society of law and order, where Jews can’t pull their subtleties on the innocent. We’re protected". By fitting accepting the regime, he is protected from his fears but is unlikely to find redemption from something he knows is wrong, he won't be finding any higher reality or truth for that matter.... The I Ching presents an alternative to fear, as it provides a device that characters can take advantage of to provide direction to their lives, redeem themselves and escape, - like Juliana Frink does at the climax of the story. Although, this is still not quite freedom, but rather it is another way in which the characters are to be governed.

By using Nazism as a motif in The Man in the High Castle I think Dick invited readers to put some thought into the idea of reality and conscioussness by pushing fear in our face as a question of what reality in association with the self. Hannah Arendt once argued that 'providing a comforting, single answer to the mysteries of the past, present, and future was the main source of the mass appeal of totalitarian regimes.' (Villa, 2000) but as Dick is maybe trying to highlight; this isn't necessarily a way to solve life's problems. The characters in the novel are struggling inside the sensible world of the text and they have an option to change, if they become aware of it. As mr. Tagomi said, “We can only control the end by making a choice at each step.”

References:

Dick, P.K. (1995), Nazism and the High Castle. In Sutin, L. (Ed.), The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (pp.112-117). New York: Vintage.

Villa, D.R. (2000), The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. (pp.2-3). Cambridge University Press.