WEEK EIGHT

How does Dick’s essay (1999; 1964) illuminate his use of Nazism as a motif in High Castle?

Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle is a Sci-Fi story based on an alternate history post World War II and is based on what would happen if Germany and Japan had won the war.

In Dick’s essay he makes clear that Nazism was still a huge fear in society and goes on to say “We are still very much afraid” ( Dick, 1964, pg.112.). But it was not only us who were afraid. Dick goes on to say that the Nazi’s were also afraid, but of different things, like the U.S.A, U.K and Russia etc. but most of all the fear of Jews, Which to us we cannot comprehend. Dick questions theses fears and states that “it is subrational; it is psychological, not logical” (p.113). He goes on to question “Why do some people fear cats or streetcars or redheaded goats?” these are all strange Phobias which people do not know why they are afraid of them. And it springs "from the depths of the self unknown to the self”. Although unlike Phobias, Nazism can be explained as a result of brainwashing and propaganda. For example the pre-Nazi ‘Richard Wagner’ “invented the idea that Jews were aliens, hostile to Germany.” In my opinion, German people were brainwashed in to believing that Jews were evil in the same way we can be brainwashed by the media in thinking that nations like North Korea are threats.

Dick, P.K. (1995). Nazism and the High Castle. In Sutin, L. (Ed.), The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (pp.112-117). New York: Vintage.