The Man in the High Castle Chapters 3 & 4 Summary & Analysis

Chapters 3 & 4

Summary: Chapter 3

Juliana Frink lives in Canon City, Colorado, where she makes a living teaching judo, a Japanese martial art. She strikes up a conversation with an Italian truck driver in a local diner. When the man insults the area, a fry cook challenges him, saying he’d rather live here than deal with the Germans. The argument prompts Juliana’s thoughts to wander. She thinks about how the Germans’ madness might be related to sexual dysfunction, and how Hitler himself was the victim of syphilis. The Italian truck driver asks Juliana for a ride back to a local motel, signaling that he’s interested in her.

Baynes is on the high-speed rocket to meet Tagomi. A man sitting across from him, Alex Lotze, begins making small talk. The man is surprised to learn Baynes doesn’t speak German, the primary language of the business world. Lotze explains he is an artist hired to create an exhibition facilitating a bridging between the East and West, claiming it is art’s job to create dialogues among cultures. When Lotze makes an anti-Semitic comment, however, Baynes is disgusted. Baynes shouts to Lotze that he himself is a Jew and has had his features changed to appear more Aryan. He threatens to call the police on Lotze. Later, Baynes meets with Tagomi, who presents him with a gift, a plastic Mickey Mouse watch he chose from Childan’s stash. Baynes is insulted, but when he sees the expression on Tagomi’s face, he realizes the gesture is sincere and graciously thanks him.

Summary: Chapter 4

Frink returns to work at the W-M Corporation factory, but his boss, Wyndam-Matson, refuses to give him his job back. A co-worker, Ed McCarthy, tells Frink he is proud of him for standing up to the boss a few days earlier, and that he should go into business for himself using his skills. W-M Corporation, it is revealed, has a side business in making high-end forgeries of American artifacts, and Frink is well-trained.

Frink consults the I Ching about McCarthy’s proposal. The results are mixed—one result promises success ahead, but another warns of doom. Frink feels confused but concludes the ominous result must refer to something larger than he is, like another world war. He decides he should forge on no matter what world event unfolds. McCarthy and Frink discuss how to extract seed money from the W-M Corporation to start Frink’s business. Frink secretly hopes his venture will win back his wife, Juliana.

Back at Childan’s store, a man named Admiral Harusha comes in looking for twelve American Civil War sidearms for the captain of his ship to give his officers. Giddy with excitement over the huge sale, Childan shows him a sample, but the man immediately recognizes the pistol as a fake. Childan, embarrassed, investigates and learns that the pistol is indeed a fake. He also curiously learns that the ship the Admiral mentioned, the Syokaku, was sunk in 1945. Finally, Childan calls his supplier, Ray Calvin, to confront him.

Analysis: Chapters 3 & 4

Like Childan and Ramsay, Juliana Fink is trying to carve out a new life in the Japanese- and German-controlled states. She chooses the Rocky Mountain States, a place literally and figuratively in the middle. This territory is a narrow strip of land separating the Japanese-controlled West and the German-controlled East. The area is politically neutral, and therefore politically insignificant.

Juliana decides to become a judo instructor, adapting the new skills of her occupiers and making herself a viable member of society. She is driven by idealism. Unlike Childan and Ramsay, Juliana isn’t looking to maintain her social class; she simply wants a better life. This is why she leaves her husband Frank and heads East, to the Rocky Mountain States. Juliana thinks Frank is too ugly and admits she got restless on the Pacific Coast. She believes that people like her can make a partner bitter by wanting too much, but compared to the other characters, she maintains her identity and remains a relatively self-assured, independent woman by doing so. She embodies the American spirit by trying to better herself and follow her dreams.

Juliana’s attraction to Joe Cinnadella, the Italian truck driver she meets at a diner, takes her by surprise. As readers hear in her internal dialogue, she senses something special about the man. Joe turns out to be not what he seems, picking up on one of the central themes of the book about appearances, deception, and authenticity. Interestingly, the idea that the man might be trouble both repels and attracts Juliana. Such a detail suggests that those driven by idealism can also suffer from the inverse of their desire to live a life of their imagination as they might be attracted to a very dark ideal as well as a lighter one. In a novel about the balance of light and dark, yin and yang, Juliana could be setting herself up to tip towards one extreme, the darker one.

Baynes’ interaction with the artist Lotze is notable for a few reasons. Like many of the characters, Baynes’ identity is now unstable. He has told Tagomi he’s a Swedish businessman, but he now reveals to Lotze he’s actually a Jew. Like Ramsay, Baynes altered his appearance to appear less like his natural ethnicity. He’s even changed the shape of his skull to appear less Jewish. Baynes’ identity will be one of the most inscrutable of the novel.

Previous section Chapters 1 & 2 Next section Chapters 5 & 6