The Fallacy of Historicity

        Throughout Philip K. Dick’s novel, The Man in the High Castle, I was struck by his commentary on the value of material objects. He seems to satirize the human need to attach a deeper meaning to objects than that may actually carry. For instance, when Robert Childan gives a pin to Paul Kasoura, the only meaning that Childan attaches to it is as a bribe to ingratiate himself to someone of higher place. However, Kasoura, who at first sees the gift as a ridiculous object that contains no meaning, soon revises his perspective to attach a spiritual significance to the pin. Its creator and its salesman had no idea of this meaning, but Kasoura’s interpretation gives the pin an importance it did not have before. It is as if Kasoura could not stand to possess an object that did not have some meaning, so he assigned a significance to it that seems ridiculous to the reader. Humanity has a tendency to get attached to material objects that they think contain some element of the past, when in reality there is nothing different about that object. Another derivation of this is what Kasoura does. He attaches meaning to an object because he cannot believe that it does not contain any importance. In this way, Dick satirizes the way that Americans, and humans in general, pass down seemingly meaningful objects that are actually worthless. While in some cases the feelings attached to these objects are real and conjure up a time long gone, more often they have some emotions attached that have nothing to do with the object in question, or the object is a representation of a fantasy that will never come true.