If on a Winter's Night, a Castle

The end of If on a Winter's Night, a Traveler reminded me of The Man in the High Castle because the Reader realized that he was a fictional character in a book, just like Juliana Frink did.

The books share other similarities as well. They both have a fictional book (or 10) within them and a fictional author that helps to reveal that the novels are aware that they are novels and the characters become aware that they are fictional characters.

We discussed in class how Abensen's manner and speech reveals that he knows more about the multiple realities inside--and outside--Dick's novel than he is letting on. In If on a Winter's Night, a Traveler the role of Sillas Flannery is more obvious. He writes plans for the story of Reader and Other Reader in his journal and the Reader eventually, well, reads them.

The biggest difference here is that Juliana moves away from her fictional world while the Reader accepts his fate a character in a story and picks and ending for himself by marrying Ludmilla.

This begs the question of weither the Reader could have chosen any other fate than death or marriage. Juliana finished the fictional work within her novel (The Grasshopper Lies Heavy) and met Abensen, the things she set out to do, the things that could have kept her "trapped" in the (more?) fictional world. The Reader, by the end of the text, has not finished any of the ten novels he has started meaning he is still trapped within the confines of the novel, searching and reading.