Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Man in the High Castle, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Prejudice and Power
History vs. Daily Life
Authenticity vs. Originality
Agency vs. Chance
Moral Ambiguity and Forgiveness
Art, Perspective, and Truth
Summary
Analysis
Hugo Reiss, the German ambassador to the PSA, gets a call from Kreuz vom Meere, the head of Nazi intelligence on the west coast. Reiss and vom Meere have a tense relationship, egged on by the authorities in Berlin. Vom Meere wants to talk about the “Abwehr character” who has just arrived in the PSA, a man named Rudolf Wegener (though he is using a cover name). Reiss has no patience for the call, and he eventually succeeds in getting vom Meere off the phone.
Just as the highest-ranking Nazis are competing to replace Bormann, lower-tier Nazis like Reiss and vom Meere are also engaged in power scrambles. This section also introduces the idea of the “Abwehr,” a dissident German faction that hopes to undermine Nazi power.
Themes
Reiss’s secretary comes in, telling him that according to the pinoc government, “there’s a Jew running around the streets of San Francisco.” Reiss is unconcerned; he wants to talk about who will replace Bormann as the new Nazi leader. Reiss gets a telegram informing him a Japanese General Tedeki is traveling to the PSA incognito for some mysterious purpose. Reiss is supposed to intercept his travel—if he fails, Reiss fears that he will be sent to South Africa, and he has a deep hatred of Black people.
This passage makes clear the multiple, overlapping racial hierarchies in a typical Nazi’s mind, as Reiss is distracted from his anti-Semitism by his anti-Blackness. Moreover, the fact that both Wegener and Tedeki are both coming (and are both using assumed names) suggests that they these two mysterious figures might be working together.
Themes
Reiss’ secretary departs, and he returns to the book he has been reading: The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. After reading a passage about the fall of Berlin, Reiss shudders, thinking about the “power of fiction” to make imagined events seem real. He moves on to another scene, in which Hitler, Goebbels and the rest of the high-ranking Nazis are being tried for their crimes at Berlin. His reading is interrupted by an urgent telegram announcing that Goebbels is about to make an important speech.
Perhaps the most surprising person to read Grasshopper is Reiss, a committed Nazi. More surprising still is his reaction—he gets so wrapped up in the literary craft that he finds himself sympathetic to the novel’s anti-German characters. This is one of the clearest examples of the novel’s suggestion that art has real “power.”
Themes
Reiss again goes back to his book. In this passage, a German soldier struggles to make sense of Hitler’s death—and then realizes that he has been brainwashed by Nazi ideology. Reiss is upset by this scene, because it appears “somehow grander, more in the old spirit than the actual world.” However, Reiss assures himself that fiction always brings out people’s “base lusts,” and therefore that his own reaction to The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is merely a result of authorial manipulation.
Though Reiss tries to dismiss fiction’s influence on him, he finds himself unable to (it is particularly telling that he keeps picking up the book, even in the middle of work). It is especially interesting that Reiss finds the novel’s anti-Nazi rhetoric “grander” than the Nazi reality, as the Germans specifically tried to make their government impressive and spectacular.
Themes
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Now angry, Reiss decides that some Nazi needs to kill the book’s author, Hawthorne Abendsen; Reiss even considers that Abendsen was originally Jewish. Reiss feels that to assassinate Abendsen, locked in his secure “High Castle” of a house, would be to have “the last word.” Suddenly, Reiss is overwhelmed by the feeling that the war will never be over—there will be Jews everywhere, even on Mars. Reiss calms himself down and decides it is not worth it to focus on Abendsen. Instead, he turns on the radio to hear Goebbels’s speech.
The comparison between Abendsen’s art (literal words) and violence as “the last word” is fascinating—Abendsen is writing fictional narrative, whereas Reiss hopes to craft historical narrative. Those two things then come together in Goebbels’ speech, which is probably highly articulate (as Goebbels is a propagandist).
Themes
