Question 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?
The Man in the High Castle is commonly regarded as Phillip K. Dicks most popular novel. The novel revolves around the main characters recurring use of the Chinese Oracle, namely the I Ching. The author was known to have heavily relied on the oracle to aid him in writing The Man in the High Castle.
The I Ching is among the oldest classic ancient Chinese texts. Traditionally when someone went to consult the I Ching a bundle of yarrow sticks were tossed but now they use three coins that are tossed six times to construct six lines of hexagrams. The I Ching is then used to figure out what each hexagram represents regarding the question that was asked. There are 64 possible configurations of the hexagrams and that is why Dick used this method. He used it because there would be an element of chance and many possibilities (Mountfort, 2016).
Dick referred to the I Ching whilst writing The Man in the High Castle whenever one of his characters used it. When a character would ask the oracle a question Dick would throw the coins and describe what hexagram lines they had got. This had an obvious effect on the direction the story could go and Dick was always adamant that whatever readings his characters received he used (Mountfort, 2016).
However, due to Dicks reliance on the I Ching throughout his writing he did not have any plot, structure or notes for himself to fall back on and hit a snag when the I Ching did not help him come to a satisfactory ending and so he left it unresolved. For many years Dick actually blamed the I Ching for not helping him come to a satisfactory ending. Dick and the I Ching had a falling out of sorts, as he refused to use it anymore referring to it as an evil book that had a malicious spirit (Mountfort, 2016). Despite that the rift between Dick and the I Ching reportedly did not last long and he went back to consulting the I Ching and deliberating on the different possibilities of how to better end his novel.
References
Mountfort, P. (2016). The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s the man in the high castle. Science Fiction Studies, 43(2), 287-309. https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.43.2.0287
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