- Week 8 -

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

This week’s questions are reviewing the last week’s reading, The Man in the High Castle. The background of this book is based on the alternate history. In general, Dick is described as a philosophical relativist who found in SF the best medium for his opinions (Roberts, 2002).

Through the Dick’s essay, he emphasises and has confidence the idea of Nazism which is used as a motif. As I shortly explain the Nazism, it is a National Socialism which refers to the policy of racist nationalism in Germany from 1933 to 1945. “Naziism-which is right and proper, because that is the true topic, far more so than any novel or any review, and only proves that I am right: We are still very much afraid, still rightly so very much disturbed” (Dick, 1964, p.112). According to Dick (1964), The Man in the High Castle is sub-rational and psychological but it is not logical. He supports this idea by using phobia examples. Also the essay is expressed that the writer is having scary feelings and afraid of Nazism. However, when I was reading this part as a reader, I think the examples are not enough to support his illumination of Nazism in his essay.

- According to McKnee, what relationship did Dick’s ideas have to (a) Christianity (b) religion and philosophy in general?

Dick’s ideas are particularly created with two parts as ‘Christianity’ and ‘Religion, and philosophy’. The number of literary scholars who have observed Dick’s work define his religious writing as Gnostic and they take for granted his philosophy is totally coherent (McKnee, 2004). The conception of Gnosticism is a many religious movements which occur in early Christianity. Dick used Gnostic interpretations and applied them in his own works, for example, The Divine Invasion and The Man in the High Castle.

In The Divine Invasion, Dick takes a similar concept in science-fictional terms. The novel is described with Augustine’s spring of truth and it shows Dick’s belief in the authority of Christian Scripture (McKnee, 2004). One of the Christian forms of logos which are come from a various sources is deeply located in the notes for the development to The Man in the High Castle. The Christian concept of logos is more vividly remarked in The Divine Invasion. In my point of view, after I read McKnee’s reading, Dick’s notion of the piecemeal logos and the Augustinian are interrelated and overtly composed in his novel. “For Dick, the two functions of the logos-continual creation and individual transformation-were intimately linked, and he consistently identified God’s Word with Jeus Christ” (McKnee, 2004, p.43).


References:
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.

McKee, Gabriel (2004). A Scanner Darkly: Dick as a Christian theologian. In Pink Beams of Light from the God in the Gutter: the sciencefictional religion of Philip K. Dick. NY: U Press of America.