Seeds of Light in Totalitarian Darkness

The state of today’s world may often seem dire— indeed, it sometimes does not give much cause for hope. But it is hard to imagine a more dismal, despondent, and demoralising society to live in, one that makes our present situation appear like Utopia, than that which would have come to pass if the Second World War had been won by the Axis as opposed to the Allied powers. It is unappealing to conceive of such a world for mere seconds, let alone read an entire book on it (or, come to think of it, spend time writing such a thing) and this is perhaps why I haven’t been too hasty in getting round to Philip K. Dick’s masterpiece in alternate reality, The Man in the High Castle. I am a huge fan of classic science fiction (did the Wellsian tripods on the website’s background image not give that away?) and yet never found myself avidly reaching for this particular work.

Perhaps it is because, unlike the other dystopian novels that sit alongside it (must dystopias always be set in the future? From 1985 onwards, I feel that argument has naturally diminished) there is not the comforting distance of fantasy to soothe the sweats that reading about such terrible totalitarian states can produce— it is clear that Dick’s speculative novel is rooted in historical fact, and the present that it presents was at one point painfully close to becoming something more than fiction.

As such, I was expecting a well-crafted but dreary novel, painstakingly charting the development and possible collapse of a civilisation governed by the Nazis, likely centred around the most infamous figures from that band of maniacal despots and fanatics. Instead, however, the novel barely spends any time at all on the fate of the Nazi party; it is set on the other side of the world, on the west coast of America, an area ruled not by the Germans but the Japanese. Furthermore, the main characters are not in any way associated with the Nazis, but are normal people just trying to make a living in their demented reality.

The way that some of the characters seek meaning in their chaotic worlds is very interesting. Throughout the novel, certain characters rely on the ‘I Ching’, an ancient Chinese wisdom text that offers prophecies and portents based on the hexagrams formed by yarrow stalks. Frank and Juliana Frink, and Mr Tagomi, all seem incapable of making any important decisions without first consulting the text; they pore over its possible meanings for hours, for most of the time the wisdom provided is nebulous and enigmatic. On some occasions, it is eerily accurate in its prophecies, such as its knowledge of the fact that Baynes is not who he says he is— on others, it is utterly irrelevant, like its advice about a man with ‘purple knee bands’ that even Frank Frink, its most devout follower, cannot fathom the meaning of. Ultimately, though, the complete reliance that these people have on the text is a signifier of how little faith they have in their own capacities to face the unknown perils of the future. This is understandable, considering how horribly wrong everything has gone for them in their reality. But just like the tramps in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, who are unable to will themselves to move until the titular elusive individual appears to provide a reason for it, Dick’s characters are petrified of making a decision by themselves without consulting the ‘I Ching’ first. They have lost all trust in the natural workings of the world, of morality and justice and the sense that good will triumph in the end, and so are no longer willing to leave anything up to the whims of fate. Thus, they rely on the assuring hand of ancient wisdom to guide them, rather than their own autonomous minds.

However, this over-reliance on ancient wisdom is of no use when confronted with pure evil. The Nazis, Dick tells us, are not interested in submitting themselves to the teachings of a bygone age, nor the wisdom of spiritual traditions; instead they have claimed supreme, divine agency for themselves, as they ‘identify with God’s power and believe they are godlike’. The root of their psychopathy is that they desire to bend the natural order of things, the Tao, to their own will, and see no reason as to why they should not. And whilst the common people are too afraid to trust in their own senses of right and wrong, nobody will dare to stop them. As General Tedeki explains near the end of the book, the I Ching works by providing an ‘external frame of reference’ with which one can make sense of the world— but when Mr Tagomi learns of Operation Daffodil, a plan favoured by the Reich to obliterate the Japanese islands and seize her foreign lands as their own, the root of his suffering is no longer an abstract, interior, spiritual disorder, but a present, material threat to all life. So huge, so sublime is this looming oblivion, that not even the wisdom in the ‘I Ching’ can provide solace. Instead, he turns desperately to the simple beauty in a recently-made silver pin for guidance— he has been told there is harmony within the design, an order that is so lacking from his own life— and struggles for hours to try and learn from the ‘blob’ of jewellery how to gain this purpose in form himself.

Consciously, he believes that he has failed to find it, but in actuality, his ever-widening despair sows the only real seeds of hope within the novel.

Almost without thinking, Tagomi’s newfound spiritual destitution causes him to act out against the Nazi party, and he uses his authority to obstruct the arrest and deportation of Frank Frink. Frink is a Jewish man in hiding, and had this arrest been allowed to take place, it would have resulted in his death. Had Tagomi been complacent in his understanding of morality, as he had been while he had complete faith in the teachings of the ‘I Ching’, he likely would not have thought twice about signing off the arrest; after all, it would have been part of his usual duties, his fulfilment of the natural order of things. The Nazi officer even remarks after Tagomi refuses to comply that the matter ‘ought to be mere formality with no personality embroiled’. But Tagomi has taken the first step to becoming an autonomous individual, who takes morality not from teachings or institutions, but his own intuition, and as such the life of an innocent man is saved from an arbitrary and hellish doom. It is an entirely selfless act on the part of Tagomi, who does not remotely realise the impact of his actions— he subsequently suffers a heart attack and, while recovering his health, still lies in the tatters of his old value systems— but it is an act of supreme kindness only possible because he was untethered from all existing sources of external morality, and relied simply on his impulsive, gut sense of right and wrong to guide his hand.

Earlier in the novel, Joe, the Nazi assassin, describes the state of the world to Juliana as ‘it’s all darkness’; but as in the cycle of light and dark as portrayed in the Tao by Ying and Yang, even in unending darkness, the seeds of new light are silently sown. Regarding the pin that Mr Tagomi believes holds wisdom, though he does not know why (‘I have no faith, but I am currently grasping at straws’ he tells the shopkeeper as he buys it in despair) it is a ‘silver triangle ornamented with hollow drops. Black beneath, bright and light-filled above’. Though the evils of this world may seem by the end of the novel all but overwhelming, Dick also gives the slightest glimmer of hope, that the potential for goodness is always present as well.

As you can probably tell, The Man in the High Castle is a novel remarkably profound and thought-provoking, with philosophical considerations that range far beyond mere historical fantasising. I would love in the future to investigate these subtle themes in more detail, but for now, these brief, stream-of-consciousness musings will have to do. I hope they have sufficed.

Thank you for reading,