The Man in the High Castle Chapters 1 & 2 Summary & Analysis

Summary: Chapter 1

Robert Childan runs an antique shop in San Francisco called American Artistic Handicrafts which deals in American memorabilia from pre-World War II America. It is post-World War II 1960s and Japan and Germany have won the war. Japan has taken the Pacific Coast States and Germany has taken the East Coast States, as well as the South. The middle Rocky Mountain States remain independent.

Childan feels irritated because Mr. Tagomi, a Japanese dignitary, has called Childan admonishing him for not having the Civil War recruitment poster he ordered in time. Childan is white, and he resents pandering to his new Japanese oppressors. A young, well-mannered Japanese couple enters Childan’s store, complimenting Childan’s selections. They’re so impressed that they invite him back to their home for a private showing. This attention soothes Childan after his call with Tagomi. He happily agrees.

Another man, Frank Frink, is at home listening to the radio. As he listens to the German rhetoric emanating from the airwaves, he shudders thinking of the atrocities the Germans commit. Frink is desperate. He doesn’t want his welding job at Wyndam-Matson anymore, but he doesn’t have many alternatives because he is Jewish. Frink consults his I Ching for answers. He asks the oracle how to handle his situation at Wyndam-Matson and whether he’ll ever see his ex-wife, Juliana, again. The oracle answers that he must remain humble and that one shouldn’t marry such a maiden. The oracle’s words confirm for Frink that he shouldn’t have married Juliana for all her negative qualities; however, Frink still loves her.

Summary: Chapter 2

Nobusuke Tagomi, a Japanese political official is awaiting Mr. Baynes, a Swedish diplomat traveling by high-speed German rocket. Tagomi is anxious to strike a deal with Baynes to gain more information about their high-tech plastics, which put the Germans in the lead to colonize space. Without access to this technology, the Japanese are struggling to keep up economically.

Tagomi consults the I Ching and the omen is bad, so he calls in Mr. Ramsay, a pinoc—a member of a white puppet government within the Japanese regime—for ideas on an American artifact to give to Baynes to impress him. Tagomi also receives an ominous coded message from his contacts in Tokyo: “Things are seldom what they seem—Skim milk masquerades as cream.” Tagomi believes Baynes must be a spy.

Meanwhile, Childan heads over to Tagomi’s office to offer him a replacement item. Childan stresses over the social customs he has to remember in the Japanese-controlled building. He reflects on how he much prefers the Germans and their miraculous productivity to the Japanese hyper-focus on intricate social customs and rules. Childan admits to himself, however, that it was a Japanese man who inspired him to launch his antique business. It was when Major Ito Humo came into the bookstore where he worked looking for collectibles from an American children’s game called Horrors of War. Childan then had the idea to sell these types of items to Japanese collectors.

Analysis: Chapters 1 & 2

This is a world where children’s playing cards and Civil War posters are considered ethnic and priceless. This is a world where the Allied powers lost World War II and the United States is divided between Japan and Germany. In Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle, an alternate world prevails where white Americans are subjugated to their Japanese and German occupiers. Germany is on its way to winning the space race, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been assassinated. It’s clear from the beginning that the reader is in an alternate reality that seems very much like their own, yet vastly different.

Dick’s work is technically a work of science fiction, in that it describes a potential reality. Yet as the characters discuss in the novel, some might define science fiction as a work that deals with the future, and advances in science and its potential effects—neither of which this book does. Dick’s novel does something else: It imagines the potential effects of an alternate history which advances a different future reality altogether. The novel explores what life could have been like if the Nazis won World War II.

The first set of characters introduced is those who demonstrate the new power structure at hand in this alternate reality. Nobusuke Tagomi is a Japanese foreign official living on the Pacific coast. Childan and Ramsay, “native” Americans, now must carve out a life under a new regime where people like Tagomi are in power. Some, like Childan, feel compelled to retain some social status. Childan is resentful of being pushed to a lower rung on the ladder of social class, and it affects his interactions with other characters as he’s always thinking of his place with them. For others like Ramsay, the matter of social class is a non-issue. He simply assimilates completely into the new Japanese culture that dominates. Ramsay adopts Japanese customs and even changes the color of his skin to appear more Asian. Ramsay might be higher on the totem pole of social class, being a high-ranking Japanese official’s assistant, but he wiped his face clear, quite literally, of any traces of his white American ethnicity. Ramsay is essentially no longer an individual.

The theme of appearances versus reality begins to take shape in these chapters. Tagomi’s coded message from Japan shows that things are not what they seem, a theme that recurs throughout the novel. Many of the characters wear disguises, masquerade as someone else, alter their features, and deal in real and fake wares. Tagomi interprets the message to mean that the Swedish businessman he’s about to meet, Mr. Baynes, is likely masquerading as a spy. And he’s right. This is a sign to readers as well to pay attention, for things are not as they seem.

Next section Chapters 3 & 4