The Man in the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick

He was obsessed with the idea that the universe was only apparently real, an illusion behind which the truth might dwell.

Author Belief

The expert use of interior monologue, a technique Dick employs again and again in his novels, allows the reader to inhabit the psyches of individuals driven to contemplate their powerlessness in light of the ultimate rule of the Third Reich.

Author

Juliana and her actions we are offered a glimpse of the truth that is the crux of the novel.

Juliana character note

And after all, they had been successful with the Jews and Gypsies and Bible Students. And the Slavs had been rolled back two thousand years’ worth, to their heartland in Asia. Out

Note1

they’re cynics with utter faith. It’s a sort of brain defect, like a lobotomy – that maiming those German psychiatrists do as a poor substitute for psychotherapy.

Note2

Then it is in me, too, the psychotic streak. A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And – how many of us do know it? Not Lotze. Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.

Note 3

They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God’s power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archetype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off.

Note 4

Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small … and you will escape the jealousy of the great. As he unfastened his own belt, Baynes said, ‘Mr Lotze, I have never told anyone this.

Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed – all he’s got to do is thump on the drum, and there’s his response.

Note5

What our corporate state demands from us is comprehension of the social forces – of history.

We can only control the end by making a choice at each step.

On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components. We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.