In the final scene of the novel "The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick....
is the fictional writer Abendsen actually living in OUR world?
Just finished this great book, and was wondering if others puzzled over the final scene as I did...
My reading is that Hawthorne Abendsen (author of "The Grasshopper lies heavy") and his wife Caroline are actually living in OUR world. Juliana Frink slips into their world (i.e. our world) from the fantasy world of the novel, in the same way that Mr. Tagomi slips into the real world and sees the Embarcadero Freeway earlier in the novel. In the real world, "The Grasshopper lies heavy" would be a novel about Germany and Japan winning the war, not losing it.
Evidence for this...
(1) [Juliana said:] "The Gestapo file said you're attracted to women like me."
Abendsen, with only the slightest change of expression, said, "There hasn't been a Gestapo since 1947."
"The SD, then, or whatever it is."
"Would you explain?" Caroline said in a brisk voice.
I take this passage to reflect the Abendsen's worldview in which the Gestapo ceased to exist during the Nuremberg trials, in approximately that year. If he was in the world of the novel, he would probably accept Gestapo as an alternative term for SD.
(2) "You could at least carry a weapon," his wife said. "I know someday someone you invite in and converse with will shoot you down, some Nazi expert paying you back;" ...
For her to be expecting a Nazi expert implies he has written a book where the Germans win and are shown to be barbarians (like "The Man in the High Castle"). If he had written a book where the Germans lose, they would be fearing assassination by the Reich, not by some "Nazi expert".
(3) Juliana said, "I wonder why the oracle would write a novel. Did you ever think of asking it that? And why one about the Germans and the Japanese losing the war? Why that particular story and no other one? What is there it can't tell us directly, like it always has before? This must be different, don't you think?"
Neither Hawthorne nor Caroline said anything.
My interpretation is that they don't say anything because they are shocked that she thinks the book has the Axis losing. In his world, his book has the Axis winning.
(4) Raising his head, Hawthorne scrutinized her. He had now an almost savage expression. "It means, does it, that my book is true?"
"Yes," she said.
With anger he said, "Germany and Japan lost the war?"
"Yes."
I read it that he's angry because he realizes that she has slipped in from the "alternate reality" (which is "true") where the Axis wins. ("This girl is a daemon" he says a few paragraphs down...) So he has just found out that his alternative reality novel where the Axis wins is the real reality. That's why he's angry.
Did anyone else read it like this?
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posted by jozxyqk at 6:03 PM on September 30, 2006