Philip K. Dicks novel The Man In The High Castle (1962) is classified to be his breakthrough piece of work and has been hugely critically acclaimed in the realm of alternate history genres. The premise of the novel is the alternate historical situation which would have occurred if Germany would have won the second world war, and Nazi power were to have ruled the world. The story is set in America in the 1960’s and shows the East coast under Nazi, and the West coast under Japanese occupation. The central plot device relies on the characters periodically using the Chinese oracle, the I Ching.
“The I Ching has existed for thousands of years as a philosophical taxonomy of the universe, a guide to an ethical life, a manual for rulers, and an oracle of ones personal future and the future of the state.” (Eliot Weinberger) While writing the novel Philip K. Dick also used the I Ching, to help guide the events of the story and determine the pattern of decision making. This established an interesting metaphysical dynamic between the author and the protagonists, as the oracle harbors existence within the authors reality and the fictional reality of the protagonists. The use of the oracle lays down a philosophical foundation which branches out into the realms of meaningful coincidence and infinite alternate realities. The Man In The High Castle transcends beyond the boundaries of causality and linear chronological storytelling, and enters the realm of postmodern fiction. Because of the novels philosophical complexities, the constraints of genre fiction do not apply to it, and the bounds of literature are challenged. The concept of many worlds interpretation can be applied to way the oracle summons many different realities and this crosses into the study of quantum physics.
The genre of The Man In The High Caste has been debated, mainly because of how complex and philosophically articulate the novel actually is. Because it portrays and alternate historical setting, it is easy to reduce the novel to simply be alternate history, but because of the philosophical intricacies and the intellectual depth, the genre of alternate history is too narrow to fit the extensive and ever widening expanse of The Man In The High Castle. It would be more accurate to label the novel as postmodern alternate history, as it still possesses the basic premise of portraying a world in an alternate historical setting, but breaks away from causality and the more traditional, diachronic view of time. Postmodern alternate history uses a synchronic view of time and applies theories of postmodern relativism to the complexities of the story. It shows a multiple coexistence of factors or facts and establishes a web of interrelationships, which allows for a more complicated plot structure. Dick’s notion of history is certainly synchronic rather than diachronic, in the terms of Jameson’s analysis, both in his evocation of a web of interrelationships and in his sense that the profusion of possible realities could radically undermine our sense of the real. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a better summary of High Castle’s philosophical implications. (Mountfort, p.:301)
Another defining feature which makes the novel postmodern is the importance of the I Ching and other eastern influences. By implementing a metaphysical plot device which connects to eastern beliefs such as Taoism, the philosophical and spiritual roots of the novel moves away from western norms and wishes to intellectually expand the readers perception of not just reality, but of cultural views as well.
References:
Weiberger, E. (2016) What is the I Ching? https://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/what-i-ching
Mountfort, P. (2016). The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. SF-TH Inc.
Pop Genres 2020 