Ok, so I know that I’m not the only person who is confused after reading The Man in the High Castle. But what I don’t know is if there is anyone else who went online looking desperately for help trying to decode the confusion put in front of us by PKD. And after looking through all the searches from google, yahoo, and msn, I think I may have a small idea of what he is trying to say in this book.
Out of all the added details of the book, the one that stuck with me was the I Ching. I think I spent about three days trying to find a way to equate the I Ching to my daily horoscope in the Times Picayune (hey…I though it would be a good blog idea), only to give up. But I don’t think that it was just put into the novel as a minor detail. No, I believe that PKD uses the I Ching to set up one of the themes of the novel – that many times a person determines truth/reality based on a faith (though a weak one) in what h/she sees.
This idea can be seen in the last few pages of the novel when, at Abendsen’s house, Juliana summons the oracle (I Ching) about The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Revealing that Germany and Japan really lost the war, it shows that the alternate world that PKD wrote his novel about is actually another immaterial, false world. He is saying that even though his characters are living in a world where Japan and Germany won WWII, it doesn’t mean that it is the truth/reality. It is just set up as the truth because it is what the characters are seeing in their lives and (therefore) is what they believe to be true.
But what do I know? I could be reading into this book entirely too much, just confusing myself more than what I need to be. In those multiple searches on google, yahoo, and msn, I ran across one PKD fan forum that stated it very simply:
“As with so much of Dick's work, it's the dynamics of the inquiry that is the substance. Don't look for a conclusion. Don't look for a simple twist. Even when there is one, it's ultimately just as deconstructable as the original version you had of events. And that is the PKD lesson.”
I just want to comment on the fact that maybe Dick wants us to realize that everyone has different realities (instead of different perceptions which we were talking about in class). If one believes the world is a certain way, they will see it that way and live it that way --- thus being their "reality." Even though an outsider might say that's not what the real reality is, to that person alone it is; because they don't know anything different.
ReplyDelete"Guess I've lived around them too long. Too late now to flee, to get back among whites and white ways."