4. How does Dick use the I Ching and how did his views on the oracle and its role in the novel shift over time?
According to Mountfort (2020) Dick used the I Ching as an oracle to help him write his novel, the answers he got was a key element when he wrote the story. The main characters use of the I Ching acts as the novels central plot element and Dick used the I Ching obsessively when he wrote the book (Mountfort, 2016). Dick (n.d.) said himself that he used the I Ching because several of his characters used it. When one of the characters asked a question, he’d throw the coinsand and write the hexagram lines they got. This resulted in twelve I Ching results that highlights the central concerns of the novels main characters. It connects characters who never meet, but their actions still affect each other in specific ways (Mountfort, 2016).
Mountfort (2016) writes that Dick’s obsession with using the I Ching helped setting up a “powerful metafictional dynamic” between Dick and his protagonists. Although Dick uses the oracle to help him in his writing, Mountfort (2016) mentions that Paul Williams wrote an useful analysis of the most important points where the I Ching is used in the text, Williams doesn’t believe that the plot were gained mainly through I Ching reading, but that it were used only when the characters used it in the story.
Mountfort (2016) writes on that the I Ching added a philosophical base for the story in the “synchronistic notion of simultaneity or “meaningful coincidence” that is contrary to classical western views of causality” and he argues that the I Ching is a device that unifies stylistic and philosophical levels of the book.
As for Dick’s relationship with the I Ching it seems to have had its ups and downs. Dick was never satisfied with the ending of his novel ad he blamed the I Ching for not providing him with a satisfying ending, he wrote that he would have liked it to have a “stronger, better ending”. Dick actually came to a point where he believed that the oracle had misled and betrayed him on purpose, although this conflict with the I Ching didn’t last very long (Mountfort, 2016).
The oracle shifted from being a key element to his writing to becoming the villain in a way, considering how Dick thought the I Ching had given him an unsatisfying ending in purpose.
Sources:
Mountfort, P. (2016). The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. SF-TH Inc.
Mountfort, P. (2020). Week 10: The Man in the High Castle, uchronie and the I Ching. PowerPoint.
Pop Genres 2020 