Can someone explain the ending of 'The Man In The High Castle'? (Spoilers)?

Question

Specifically, the revelation in Hawthorne Abendsen's house that, in fact, the Allies did winn WWII.

I'm a big fan of Philip K. Dick, and I'm comfortable with all the crazy stuff that goes on in his novels.

I'm also perfectly happy, most of the time, with ambiguous endings. I don't need narratives tied up in a neat little bow.

But I feel with 'The Man...' I'm missing a fundamental message - a meaning or moral of some sort.

Little help?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Several characters in The Man in the High Castle read a popular, although banned, novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a novel within a novel. The author, Hawthorne Abendsen, describes an alternate history in which the Axis powers lost the war. Although closer to actual history, the novel portrays a third scenario.

In Abendsen's novel, Roosevelt survives the assassination attempt but does not run for reelection in 1940. The next president, Rexford Tugwell (who, in 'our' reality, never ran for the presidency), mitigates the bombing of Pearl Harbor by sailing the U.S.'s Pacific fleet, so the U.S. enters the war with more naval power.

In the novel the British contribution to victory is greater than in the historical scenario and the Russian and American lower. The turning points of the war are a British victory over Nazi troops under General Erwin Rommel in Africa, a British advance through the Caucasus and, in coordination with the remnants of the Russian army, a British victory at Stalingrad. As in the historical scenario, Italy turns against the Axis Powers. British tanks storm Berlin at the end of the war.

After the war, Britain, still led by Churchill, doesn't lose its empire and the U.S. exports mostly to China, under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek. The British Empire remains racist while the U.S. solves its race issues by the 1950s, causing tension between the two superpowers.

Eventually, the U.S. challenges the traditional British role as the world's most influential nation. However, the British ultimately overcome the U.S. to become the world's supreme power.

The book's author, Hawthorne Abendsen, is rumored to live in a highly guarded fortress; his nickname is "the Man in the High Castle," from which the novel itself is named.



The most prominent theme in The Man in the High Castle is the question of the penetration of true reality into a false reality. This can be seen in several aspects of the novel.

Robert Childan discovers that many of his antiques are fakes and becomes paranoid that his entire stock consists of counterfeits.
Several characters are spies, traveling under false names and pretenses.
Although not describing the historical scenario, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, the book-within-a-book, portrays actual history more accurately than The Man in the High Castle itself.
The jewelry made by Frink and McCarthy more closely resembles actual 60s American folk art, rather than Japanese or German works. The connection between these pieces and a deeper reality mainfests itself through the effect the pieces have on several characters.
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is essentially the alternate-history counterpart of The Man in the High Castle in that, to the characters inhabiting the fictional world, the world of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is the fiction. This implies the penetration of two false realities suggesting that even the idea of two realities, true and false, is incorrect and that there are multiple realities.
The Man in the High Castle of the book's title actually lives in a normal house.
At the novel's end, it is implied that a few characters, through consultation with the I Ching, discover that their world is fictional.
One character seems to briefly become cognizant of the real world.
With this theme, Dick suggests the questions, who or what is the agent causing this inter-penetration of realities? And why does that agent desire that this reality be known as an artifice? This theme is addressed further in several subsequent Dick novels, including Ubik, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, and Valis.

The Man in the High Castle also deals with themes of justice and injustice (through Frink's fleeing from Nazi persecution), gender and power (through Juliana's relationship with Joe), shame and identity (through Childan's new confidence in American culture from the limiting, backwards-looking obsession with nostalgia and antiquities), and the effects of fascism and racism on culture (throughout the novel, especially sections in dealing with the lack of value of life in the wake of Nazi dominance of the world, and the race superiority and racism that several characters - Japanese, American and German - occasionally indulge in).

I am hoping the themes help you....and yes I have read the book...

Source(s):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_…

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

There is certainly lots of stuff there I hadn't previously thought about.

Answer 2

I can't beat ambrinker1's analysis. I sure hope it is original with him, even if he consulted wikipedia. Because it is really an excellent analysis. And that's speaking as an old philosophy major from long, long ago when the book was new.