Madness

In the last third of The Man in the High Castle, there is a shift in the tone of the novel. Beginning with Juliana’s fit in the Denver hotel room, some of the characters fall into the depths of madness.  Sentences become short, out of sequence, and nonsensical, as though the reader is in the character’s psyche as sanity slips away.  Juliana, upon realizing that Joe is actually a Nazi sent to kill Abdensen, loses her sense of reality, slitting Joe’s throat, wandering around naked, and becoming fully unaware of her actions.  I found that this episode was extraordinarily similar to that of Mr. Tagomi at the beginning of chapter 14.  Mr. Tagomi goes mad after killing the two men who were after Mr. Baynes.  He, too, wanders around with no sense of direction.  Though his thoughts are often presented in short, confused sentences like Juliana’s, he ponders the meaning of his existence, death, yin and yang, and the evils of the modern world.

Further, both Juliana and Mr. Tagomi seek comfort in their maddened state; each turns to an object that they hope will help return their sanity.  For Juliana, it is the oracle on which she depends so dearly that she looks to for guidance.  In her delirium she begs the oracle: “Tell me what to do; please” (216).  Mr. Tagomi, on the other hand, turns to the silver triangle from Edfrank jewelry.  In his existential crisis, he hopes to find solace and understanding by staring at the piece of silver.  But he becomes entranced by the silver, convinced that it alone will save him: “Now talk to me, he told it.  Now that you have snared me. I want to hear your voice” (230).  I think that both Juliana and Mr. Tagomi seek help in these inanimate objects because they are afraid or unable to face the reality of what they have done and what they have learned.  They search for some outside source of wisdom to guide them because they cannot form clear thoughts on their own.  But as Mr. Tagomi discovers: “[It] did not save me…Did not help” (239).