The Man in the High Castle is set in alternate universe, one in which Germany and Japan won World War II and split North America between themselves. It follows, then, that many of the novel’s characters, reeling from the fallout of war and colonization, conceptualize time in terms of global political events. Additionally, this kind of historical thinking is a crucial feature of Nazi ideology, which shapes and threatens the lives of everyone living in the former U.S. Yet even as history dominates every facet of life, many of the book’s protagonists—especially Nobusuke Tagomi, a thoughtful Japanese bureaucrat—realize that to go on living through geopolitical upheaval, they must find calm and pleasure in everyday occurrences. The Man in the High Castle thus makes clear that while historical events like war and colonization reshape even the most private aspects of life, real meaning is found not in the broad strokes of history, but in the mundane routines of daily existence.
When the Nazis secured military victory, their Fascist view of history (in which people are able to shape and take ownership of world events) emerged as a triumphant worldview. Plastics expert Baynes reflects that the Nazis have a fundamentally different sense of “space and time”: “they see through the here, the now, into the vast deep black beyond. They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history.” In turning their attention to the future—and thus in thinking of time on an inherently “vast” scale—the Nazis must also devalue the “here” and “now” of daily existence. And even those who resent Nazi thinking seem to (perhaps unconsciously) adopt this view of time. Baynes, for example, dismisses his fear of dying as “the trivial worry. The finite, private worry about my own particular skin.” Similarly, antiques dealer Robert Childan admires the Nazis focus on infrastructure and conquest; the Nazis can “remold the world by magic,” and he berates himself for not doing the same. After all, the Fascist mindset values legacy, not life—and when the world’s newspapers are full of just-discovered planets and brand-new feats of engineering, personal, private affairs begin to seem “trivial”.
Indeed, historical change—specifically, the massive geopolitical shift wrought by German and Japanese colonization of the U.S.—alters every aspect of daily life. When Childan dines with wealthy Japanese clients, he berates himself for his inability to move the conversation away from politics—but then reflects that it is “impossible to avoid the topic. Because it’s everywhere, in a book I happen to pick up or a record collection.” Juliana encounters a similar issue with her Italian lover Joe, where even the sound of German folk music sets him off on a tangent about his preference for Italian culture. Music and literature, which might normally be seen as an escape from political reality, now become reminders of how completely the world has changed. A prime example of the way German and Japanese victory shapes daily life is in the absence of television. As Juliana (somewhat sardonically) reflects, “the Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television?” The Nazis have prioritized geographic expansion over entertainment technology, and so in The Man in the High Castle, German rockets speed to Mars while TV has yet to be invented. It is also worth noting that this obsession with rockets reflects the Germans’ focus on the “deep black beyond,” while TV is more about gathering together in the present. And most tellingly, every single profession in the novel reflects the legacy of conquest. Juliana teaches Judo, a Japanese martial art; Frank and Childan both work to sell American artifacts to wealthy Japanese buyers; and Tagomi is a Japanese trade representative stationed in what is now a Japanese colony. Even though many of the characters have chosen seemingly apolitical jobs, every industry (from art to sales) has been completely altered in the aftermath of World War II.
Yet as the novel’s characters learn, life’s meaning comes not from focusing on big global events, but instead on small pleasures and slow changes. Baynes reflects that the Nazis’ desire to be individual shapers of history may ultimately bring about the party’s ruin, as each man will try to out-maneuver the others. If that is the case, Baynes desires that the rest of the world can “build and hope and make a few simple plans.” The language of Baynes’ wish testifies to small-scale time (he wants just a “few” plans, and they can be “simple” ones), the exact opposite of the Nazi’s massive, historical view. Similarly, shaken by having killed two men, Tagomi resolves to “go on living day to day anyhow,” to “find the small” things and enjoy them. Here, Tagomi explicitly moves away from thinking in terms of years or decades, instead focusing on each day as it comes. Moreover, Tagomi’s emphasis on “find[ing]” small pleasures suggests that this day-to-day outlook is an active one; if everyone else is emphasizing the future, someone like Tagomi must consistently work to ground themselves in the present. Most shockingly, writer Hawthorne Abendsen, once famous for living in a high-security mansion, eventually chooses to prioritize mundane routines over safety—even if it means putting his life at risk. When Juliana is shocked that Abendsen now lives in a modest suburban home, he explains that the Nazis can always “get you […], charged wire and High Castle or not.” In other words, while Abendsen accepts the dangerous reality of a Nazi takeover, he resists despair by living a normal life; if the Nazis can “get” him anywhere, he may as well spend time with his family or in his garden.
Finally, it is particularly telling that Abendsen’s High Castle gives the novel its name. This calls readers’ attention to the characters’ desire for security against historical forces—only to ultimately suggest that such a desire is fruitless. The man in the High Castle has instead chosen to live in a single-story home, just as the novel urges its audience to “find the small”: to make meaning and change not on the level of history but on the level of daily life.
Related Themes from Other Texts
History vs. Daily Life ThemeTracker
History vs. Daily Life Quotes in The Man in the High Castle
Childan nodded. No contemporary American art; only the past could be represented here, in a store such as his.
Hating the Japs as he did, he had vowed revenge; he had buried his Service weapons ten feet underground in a basement, well-wrapped and oiled, for the day he and his buddies arose. However, time was the great healer, a fact he had not taken into account […] since 1947 he had probably seen or talked to six hundred thousand Japanese, and the desire to do violence to any or all of them had simply never materialized. It just was not relevant any more.
Their view; it is cosmic. Not of a man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honorable men but of Ehre itself, honor; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Gute, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life […] What they do not comprehend is man’s helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen.
Oy gewalt! he thought. What’s happening? Did I start it in motion? Or is someone else tinkering someone I don’t even know? Or - the whole lot of us. It’s the fault of those physicists and that synchronicity theory every particle being connected with every other; you can’t fart without changing the balance in the universe […] I should take my tools, get my motors from McCarthy, open my shop, start my piddling business, go on despite the horrible line. Be working, creating in my own way right up to the end, living as best I can, as actively as possible […] I’m too small, he thought, I can only read what’s written, glance up and then lower my head and plod along where I left off.
“When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn’t. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?” [Wyndham-Matson] nudged [Rita]. “You can’t. You can’t tell which is which. There's no ‘mystical plasmic presence,’ no ‘aura’ around it […] You see my point. It’s all a big racket; they’re playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it’s the same as if it hadn’t, unless you know. It’s in here.” He tapped his head. “In the mind, not the gun.”
I wonder what it’s like to sit home in your living room and see the whole world on a little gray glass tube. If those Nazis can fly back and forth between here and Mars, why can’t they get television going? I think I’d prefer that, to watch those comedy shows, actually see what Bob Hope and Durante look like, than to walk around on Mars.
I did it again, Robert Childan informed himself. Impossible to avoid the topic. Because it’s everywhere, in a book I happen to pick up or a record collection, in these bone napkin rings—loot piled up by the conquerors. Pillage from my people.
What upset him was this. The death of Adolf Hitler, the defeat and destruction of Hitler, the Partei, and Germany itself, as depicted in Abendsen’s book . . . it all was somehow grander, more in the old spirit than the actual world. The world of German hegemony.
How could that be? Reiss asked himself. Is it just this man’s writing ability?
The Colt .44 affair had shaken [Childan] considerably. He no longer viewed his stock with the same reverence. Bit of knowledge like that goes a long way. Akin to primal childhood awakening; facts of life. Shows, he ruminated, the link with our early years: not merely U.S. history involved, but our own personal. As if, he thought, question might arise as to authenticity of our birth certificate. Or our impression of Dad.
But he had to remain where he was, in San Francisco. Still trying to arrange the meeting for which he had come. Forty-five minutes by Lufthansa rocket from Berlin, and now this. A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope.
Listen, I’m not an intellectual—Fascism has no need of that. What is wanted is the deed. Theory derives from action. What our corporate state demands from us is comprehension of the social forces—of history. You see? I tell you; I know, Juliana.
Life is short, [Childan] thought. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand. But no longer.
Nevertheless, Mr. Baynes thought, the crucial point lies not in the present, not in either my death or the death of the two SD men; it lies—hypothetically—in the future. What has happened here is justified, or not justified, by what happens later. Can we perhaps save the lives of millions, all Japan in fact?
But the man manipulating the vegetable stalks could not think of that; the present, the actuality, was too tangible, the dead and dying Germans on the floor of his office.
Mr. Nobusuke Tagomi thought, There is no answer. No understanding. Even in the oracle. Yet I must go on living day to day anyhow.
I will go and find the small. Live unseen, at any rate. Until some later time when—
Laying his coat over a chair, Frank collected a handful of half-completed silver segments and carried them to the arbor. He screwed a wool buffing wheel onto the spindle, started up the motor; he dressed the wheel with bobbing compound, put on the mask to protect his eyes, and then seated on a stool began removing the fire scale from the segments, one by one.
And what will that leave, that Third World Insanity? Will that put an end to all life, of every kind, everywhere? When our planet becomes a dead planet, by our own hands?
[Baynes] could not believe that. Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive.
We can only control the end by making a choice at each step.
[Baynes] thought, We can only hope. And try.
On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.
We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.
Truth, [Juliana] thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find. I’m lucky.
