KT's Week 7

According to Mountifort (2006), what role does the I-Ching have as an organisational device in the structure of High Castle?

The I Ching is an ancient Chinese oracle-text that Dick used to plot the development of his novel, The Man in the High Castle. Dick endorsed both the narratological and oracular functions of the I Ching, and he considered the I Ching itself as having in a sense written High Castle. The oracle-readings that Dick inserted at the critical junctures in the novel showed the ‘physical’ seams of the construction of Dick’s novel, constitute its central organisational device, and function as the meta-narrative, the text as oracle.

Actually I think the book of ‘The Man in the High Castle’ might have a simple structure, yet the story was so complicated. The characters in the novel have not met each other, but they were in the story of ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’. It made me confused reality.

However at the end of the story, Juliana Frink asked some questions-Dick might not know how to finish his novel- and the I Ching explained the truth that life in The Man in the High Castle was a false reality.

In conclusion, SF is too difficult to understand for me.

Reference

Dick, P.K. (2001; 1962). The Man in the High Castle. London: Penguin.

Mountfort, P. (2006).Oracle-text/Cybertext in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. Conference paper, Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association annual joint conference, Atlanta, 2006.