The Man in the High Castle Themes

History is kind of a big deal in The Man in the High Castle, what with the whole "Nazis win the war" thing. But in this book, history is also small-scale and personal; it's not just "Nazis won," bu...

The flip side to "History" in The Man in the High Castle is Fate and Free Will. If the average people can't affect the big-picture of history, do they have free will? Or if they have free will, doe...

Let's not pretend that the real 1960s were totally awesome and everyone got along. There was quite a bit of prejudice back then, from whites-only clubs to this mess. (For more on this real history...

In The Man in the High Castle, power is almost always power over people or power in a system… which means power over people. We do occasionally hear about power over the environment, like the Ger...

If you're least favorite part of politics is the voting, but you still love when government agencies struggle against each other, then have we got a world for you. In The Man in the High Castle, po...

Did you notice that all of our "Symbols" are art and culture—two books, jewelry, and human-made antiques? Yeah, The Man in the High Castle has a lot of art and culture. Partly this is because the...

Philip K. Dick's books are usually full of deceit, from androids pretending to be human to cops pretending to be criminals (or vice versa—it can get very confusing). So The Man in the High Castle...

In The Man in the High Castle, society is separated by class (W-M is rich and powerful vs. Frank Frink, who isn't). It's separated by race (or ethnicity: Jews, Germans, Japanese, whatever Childan i...

All the characters in The Man in the High Castle have their own flaws, but let's look on the bright side: they also have various strengths and skills. For instance, Frank Frink is great at forging...

Philip K. Dick may not be all that interested in exploring notions of femininity and masculinity, but they sneak in anyhow. Issues of femininity may not be clear, since The Man in the High Castle i...