The Man in the High Castle: Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Authenticity and Value

What is authentic and has value, and why? Dick poses this question through the objects that the characters prize and collect. For the Japanese, who have now taken over the Pacific Coast States of the United States, American cultural items, especially those from pre-WWII, are now exotic and valuable. Tagomi frequently uses Childan’s shop for high-valued American antiques to impress clients. The young, wealthy Japanese couple, the Kasouras, favor American folk jazz as a modish way of keeping up with the times. Frank Frink’s jewelry, because it is contemporary, is considered worthless. Yet Wyndam-Matson raises an interesting question when he presents two lighters, one that belonged to President FDR and one that didn’t, to his girlfriend: Which is the authentic one and does it matter? To Wyndam-Matson, it doesn’t matter—they’re both lighters made of the same metal. Value becomes subjective and relative to the eyes of the people who are in power, and in this case, it’s the Japanese who value items with historicity. Ironically, Tagomi uses a knock-off antique pistol to kill the German SD officers who come to kill Baynes. The pistol may not be a real antique, but it produces a very real result.

Versions of History

The Man in the High Castle tells an alternate history in which the Allied powers fell, and the Germans and Japanese have risen to share world power. The characters live in this version of history, but they’re continually pulled to another version of history told in Abendsen’s book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which appears in the novel as a popular fictional novel that captures many of the characters’ attention. This novel within the novel tells the true version of history, and only one character—Juliana Fink—goes so far as to track down this version of history and discover its truth. History becomes something that is obfuscated to all and perceived in different ways, like when Joe and Juliana argue about whether the German regime was really evil, and when Reiss slams Abendsen’s book for offending his sensibilities as a member of the Reich. History is manipulated by those in power, passively received by those not, and told by authors—and even they don’t have full agency. Abendsen’s book was written by the I Ching, not himself. The Man in the High Castle suggests that history is something to be constructed and interpreted but only exists in its true form outside the human mind.

Social Class

Dick’s alternate history novel may look very different in terms of social class, but the structure of class itself remains the same. There’s an upper and a lower class, and a lost class in between. On the Pacific coast, it is the Japanese who hold rank over the native white people, and on the East coast, it is the Germans who hold rank, especially over the Jews. Childan emerges as the character most preoccupied with class and his place in the world. He worries constantly about doing or saying the most socially acceptable thing, resents his place in the world as inferior to the Japanese, and fantasizes about the Germans, whom he sees as having the most elegance, for their no-holds-barred path to supremacy. Childan becomes a symbol of the very natural human urge to want to be respected, admired, and be among the class that holds the most fluency and power, and how social class, in its way of rendering someone as superior or inferior, takes a toll on a person’s psychology. Overall, Dick shows that for all the versions of history that might exist, there is one thing that doesn’t change: social classes and hierarchies of power.

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