The Man in the High Castle: Criticisms of Reality and Dictatorship by Philip K. Dick “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” -Philip K. Dick Botwinick writes in A History of the Holocaust, “The principle that resistance to evil was a moral duty did not exist for the vast majority of Germans. Not until the end of the war did men like Martin Niemoeller and Elie Wiesel arouse the world’s conscience to the realization that the bystander cannot escape guilt or shame” (pg. 45). In The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick writes of a world where Niemoeller and Wiesel’s voices never would have surfaced and in which Germany not only never would have repented for the Holocaust, but would have prided itself upon it. Dick writes of a world where this detached and guiltless attitude prevails globally, a world where America clung on to its isolationist policies, where the Axis powers obtained world domination and effectively wiped Jews from the surface, forcing all resistance and culture to the underground and allowing for those in the 1960’s Nazi world to live without questioning the hate they were born into. The Man in the High Castle is an alternative history novel that takes place in a reality that diverts from our own when Franklin D. Roosevelt is assassinated in 1933. In this way, the United States never enters into World War II. The novel follows the stories of a few characters scattered through the now puppet-state America. Many character decisions in the book are made by the use of the I Ching oracle, a testament to the influence and control of the Axis powers on culture as well as the questioning of the control of one’s own fate, something that is not reflected in the totalitarian i... ... middle of paper ... ...Man in the High Castle serves, as a science fiction novel, to make us question our own values and reality. It also implicates the idea of how Nazi ideals would mesh into a contemporary global society and how the practice of hate would pan out in a functioning and stabilized world. Botwinick writes that the study of the Holocaust is invaluable to answering the question of whether or not it could happen again, whether or not humans could again cross the boundaries of “civilized” to “savage.” Dick constructs a reality that is both opposite and necessary to our own, one in which hate and oppression is not only law, but human tendency. Works Cited Dick, Philip K. The Man in the High Castle. New York, New York: Vintage Books (Random House), 1990. Botwinick, Rita Steinhardt. A History of the Holocaust. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
The Struggle for Power in 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Invisible Man, Julius Caesar, and Lord Of The Flies. & nbsp; If you delve into the content of almost any novel, there is almost always some kind of struggle for power. It could be for rightful integration into society; power over an island; power over a country; or in some cases, even power over the minds of others. These not at all uncommon struggles for power are what keep us interested in the plot of a book. The ongoing battle between a character and his cause makes it impossible to put down a good book. For instance, the a woman to somehow find a way to get out of the constant barrage of cameras and mind control conducted by their government. Although the two of them eventually lost the battle, there was still a victor in the struggle for power: their government. & nbsp; & nbsp; they believed, that it would be impossible to say that some kind of struggle for power did not exist. They were struggling for the power of freedom. There is not only one kind of freedom you can have. Some peoples struggle for the power of freedom might just be allowed to exist at all. & nbsp; When you read the Invisible Man, a novel by Ralph Ellison, in lies one of the most incredible and wonderful struggles for power that very possibly this world has ever seen.&nbs in very different ways. Some of the different characters mentioned above had to be handled in different ways. Mr. Norton and the superintendent had to be treated always with respect. The protagonist's ability to recognize these different forms of society and how to deal with each one of them eventually helped him adapt in a more appropriate way to different places in society. The protagonist, however, was not the only person whose deme around on egg shells when dealing with the protagonist. I believe that the protagonist sensed this. It was because of the struggles for power made by people like the protagonist that eventually turned the tide for black Americans in the 19th and 20th century. However, these struggles had been going on for several centuries before his own. & nbsp; & nbsp; The first major struggle for power in Julius Caesar comes from the conspirators. This group of "rebels" has the intention to free Rome and its people from the shackles of Julius Caesar. struggle for power in the play: winning the war that Antony will put up against Brutus and his followers. & nbsp; & nbsp; On one side of the battlefield there is Ralph, and on the other side is Jack. Just opposite of him is Jack who has an almost totalitarian kind of outlook on how to get tasks done. Of the two of them, Jack is the one who seems most likely to abuse the power that he is given. Ralph simply wants to have fun, while at the same time maintaining order on the island. This back and forth battle between the two of them continues all the way through the book until all of the boys who are still alive are rescued. & nbsp; Struggles like the ones I have mentioned are extremely common in almost all forms of literature. However, as I have pointed out, these kinds of struggles have been going on since the beginning of man.
When the blame for the Holocaust is brought to mind, many immediately think of blaming the Nazis, and only the Nazis. This is not the case, however. The Holocaust was a lesson to humanity, of utmost importance. Blaming the Nazis for the atrocities is an exceptionally important part of this lesson, which is unacceptable. In Elie Wiesel's book, Night, it is evident that blame be passed to Yahweh, the Jewish people themselves, and the non-Jewish Europeans.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
The opening chapters of Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle begin by introducing main characters, describing the setting, and providing insight into the current conflicts that shape this alternate history novel. It is years after the second World War. The Nazis control the East Coast and the Japanese control the West Coast. Robert Childan is the owner of American Artistic Handcrafts in San Francisco, an antique store that frequently serves the wealthy Japanese living in the area. Mr. Childan is waiting for an important package to arrive for his client Mr. Tagomi when a young, wealthy Japanese couple enters his shop. This couple is fascinated by Childan’s pieces and decides to set up an appointment with Childan on a later date. Before
Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is The Holocaust Unique?. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2008. 387. Print.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Analysis of the main characters in this episode was done by taking into consideration the screen time that each character had and also their involvement in the story. The Man in the High Castle, is a fictional retelling of history in which the writers have changed the outcome of World War II and the Nazi Reich and the Japanese Empire came out the victors. Furthermore, the Nazi Reich bombed Washington D.C. with an Atomic Bomb instead of the United States bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both the Japanese and the Germans are ruling over the United States, the Japanese Empire controlling the western states and the Nazi Reich controlling the eastern states separated by a neutral zone going through the midwest into Mexico. These characters are
Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. Van Pelt. Holocaust: a History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
He says, “These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations,... so much violence; so much indifference.” (4). Indifference is shown by not only the people involved in these violent events, but also Wiesel’s audience as well, many clueless of these events. For one to fail to know and understand these events in order to stop and bring awareness to them is just as wrong as committing the event in the first place, according to Wiesel. One must also believe the event itself to escape the corruptive qualities of indifference. During the Holocaust, many did not believe what was happening and chose to then ignore it rather than do anything about it. The unaware audience and people in the 1940s thoroughly proves the corrosiveness of
Guilt is an extremely powerful emotion that can consume one from the inside out. In the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, everybody, including the Jews act out against each other and do not stand up for one another. In this story, Jews are forced from their homes and brought to concentration camps with rough conditions. Elie’s persecution occurred in the following concentration camps: Auschwitz, Buna, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald. The Jews took on an overwhelming amount of hardships, but the most difficult obstacle to conquer was man's lack of humanity to man. Throughout the book, the inhumanity against man develops from widespread prejudice to terribly personal punishments.
Bard, Mitchell G., ed. "Introduction." Introduction. The Holocaust. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2001.
Kaplan, Marian A., Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999
Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.
McConnell, Frank. The Modern Novel in America, Regnery, revised edition,1963, pg. 814. Rpt. In World Literature Criticism.