Week 7

I think Nic has done a GREAT job on answering the first question so i am going to focus on;

According to Mountford (2006), what role does the I Ching have as an organisational device in the structure of High Castle? How does the use of this device illuminate the character of the novel's protagonists?

I ching played an organisational device in the structure of the high castle as "Dick regarded the I Ching itself as having in a sense written the High Castle. The oracle- readings Dick inserts at these critical junctures in the novel appear to uninitiated readers as a little more than a prominent and pictureesque subtext. However, they show the 'physical' seams of the construction of Dick's novel, constitute its centural organisational device, and function as his meta-narrative: the text as oracle, however ultimatley enigmatic it may prove."

The use of this device illuminates the subterranean fate-lines that connect characters who who never meet but whose decisions and actions effect each other in concrete ways. There are 10 consulations that mountford says the high castle follows in which they use the I Ching, He then goes onto explain these. "it is said to be Dick was never satisfied with this deux ex machine. Indeed, by 1976, bitter and paranoid as one of his own mid-seventies characters (schizophrenic Bob/Fred, for instance from a scanner darkly, who spies on himself for the secret police), he had come to feel that the I Ching had delibertly misled and betrayed him.

What does Dick (1995) himself theorise about the I ching?

Dick Theorises that a first the schizoid-effective person is trapped in his own world, unable to escape the things they so desperatley want too. They are trapped like a person "under LSD in the endless now." This is when the I Ching enters. which is a device where synchronicity can be handled. it is when events occur outside of time. 'Not a chain passing from yesterday to today to tomorrow but all taking place now, and yet none having any personal conncection with the others." Dick describes it as; Good God, i was right, when your at the dentist it really does last forever. This state really does go on forever, it is not something that is temporary like on the drug LSD which only lasts for about 10hours. The events are timeless and not in control. "Our knowledge of reality is sufficient to get us by-for a little while longer. Cause and effect bubble on, and we go with them. What will distroy us in the end is synchronicity; eventually we will arrive in a blind intersection at 4.00am. The same time another idiot does, blind drunk, also tanked up on beer; both of us will then depart for the next life, with probably the same outcome there too. Synchronicity, you see, can't be anticipated; thats one of its aspects.

References -

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

Mountford, P. (2006) Oracle -text/Cybertext in Phillip K. Dick's The man in the high castle. Conference paper, popular culture association annual joint conference, Atlanta, 2006.

Dick, P.K. (1995). Schizophrenia and the I Ching. In Sutin, L. (Ed.), The shifting Realities of Phillip K. Dick. (pp. 175-182). New York: Vintage.