My experience reading Man in the
High Castle reminded me why I
tend to dislike reading a book in quantifiable sections, decided
either by myself or by an outside source. Perhaps it was simply due
to an unfortunate choice in stopping points on my behalf, but I
encountered a problem reading this text that, in my discussions with
other class-members, they seemed to avoid. In particular, I am
speaking my confusion generated by Philip K. Dick's narrative style.
At
the onset of the plot, the perspective of the character and the
limited third person narrator seemed incredibly unclear, and this
lack of clarity was used to great effect. Take, for example, an early
look into Juliana's thought processes: On page 36, Dick begins in a
clear third person - “Their trouble, she decided, is with sex; they
did something foul with it back in the 'thirties, and it has gotten
worse.” Dick then continues, clearly extending Juliana's line of
thought, “ Hitler started it with his – what was she? And his
family was inbred already; his mother and father were cousins.”
These sentences naturally follow from the first, and by eliminating
the need to continually restate that these words are the thoughts of
Juliana, the narration is smoother and more dynamic. As the book
progresses, however, this particular style of the internal monologue
is used for every character, and is utilized in the exact same way.
As a contrasting example, Rudolf Wegener confesses his feelings of
fatalism at the end of the book in the exact same structure: “No
wonder Mr. Tagomi could not go on, he thought. The terrible dilemma
of our lives. Whatever happens, it is evil beyond compare. Why
struggle, then? Why choose?” (Dick 245).
Using
this particular narrative style is a powerful way to convey to an
audience a large quantity of information concerning the inner lives
of the characters, but I think it runs into trouble with the
interweaving personalities and narratives within the story. It almost
brings the characters too close together, to a point in which it
sounds like each character is tapping into a singular mental
landscape of perspectives and emotions, when in the text, some
characters are quite different from others. I didn't know what to
make of this, and wanted to know whether or not I am the only one who
found this style powerful, but poorly implemented. Alternatively, do
you think Dick is aware of this blending of perspectives through his
narrative style, and is implementing it for just that effect? I am
curious as to what the rest of the class thinks.
I'm really glad you pointed this out, because I forgot about it until you mentioned it here. In my attempt to answer the question of how the book became conscious of itself, I thought that the transition in narrative, until I read the end, may have been the answer. As you mention, the lack of clarity in perspective has a way of blending characters together, and I thought that this quality may be used in some manner that I could not identify to make the book conscious of itself. To be honest, I still don't have an answer. I, however, think your analysis of the effect is on point, and maybe that is all the author intended. Analyzing further, perhaps the "singular mental landscape of perspectives and emotions" which the characters seem connected through, is a merely a side effect of using the I Ching to write the whole novel or Philip K. Dick's conscious effort to create that effect. This issue in perspective reminds me of O'Brien's use of quotes. Sometimes he uses them and sometimes he doesn't, but I could never identify a pattern, and we never really discussed it in class.
ReplyDeleteI can't really tell if Dick did it on purpose or not. You could probably justify that he did it in purpose because all of the characters are channeling the same ideas through the I Ching, but I personally don't have enough faith in the coherency of Dick's writing to believe that. I just picture him writing this book in a drug-addled haze, and then later reading it, sober, thinking it doesn't really make sense but it's profound anyway. Pretty much my theory for an explanation of everything in this book is drugs.
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