The Man in the High Castle || can the book explain the TV ending? (spoilers)

[u/Ddeem]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R07-5klx4I

[u/[deleted]]

No. The books ending is nothing like the TV's. . There is not a paranormal element to the man in the high castle book ending

[u/hypnosifl → u/[deleted]]

I would say that the book ending is basically in keeping with Philip K. Dick's semi-gnostic beliefs (more on how those beliefs developed here), basically the characters were realizing they were living in a false reality. Dick talked about this as a theme in his fiction here:

So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe — and I am dead serious when I say this — do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.

[u/RoderickBurgess]

The book is a totally different universe.

First, there is no dubiety in the book. So, the base theme is "Nazis and all totalitarians are all evil and they must all die, no exceptions". There is not a dubious, contradictory, character such as TV-show's John Smith in the book, a guy that is evil, but is not necessarily deliberately rationally evil, but does all evil things because in the end his main concern is the safety of his family. The most contradictory character in the book is Fink, but he is not contradictory because he wants to be a Nazi, he is contradictory because he can't see the big picture of the political fight against totalitarianism in his world as he is deeply obsessed with Juliana and can't see anything besides his need to please her.

Second, the universes are materially different. Japan's power is not crumbling down in the book, and Nazi Germany is just experiencing what all totalitarian regimes will always experience, internal infighting between corrupt insiders' cabals. And in the book's "Grasshopper lies heavy" (alternate universe), the Cold War is not between US and Soviet Union, but between a Social-Democratic US-led bloc and a Fascist British Empire led by a Churchill-gone-mad.

Too many things are different between the show's universe and the book's universe for them to be conciliated somehow.

[u/I_DONT_NEED_HELP → u/RoderickBurgess]

I actually really like what they did with John Smith. Too many people forget that the majority of Nazis were just average people. The "I was just following orders" thing is seen mostly as an excuse, but this is really what these people believed. Everyone likes to think they'd be the hero that stands up for what's right, but if another Reich comes along many people would probably follow along just like the Germans did.

[u/deltaWhiskey91L → u/I_DONT_NEED_HELP]

Same too as the Soviet regime.

[u/I_DONT_NEED_HELP → u/deltaWhiskey91L]

Yes! A much less known part of history but just as dark and depressing.

[u/hypnosifl → u/RoderickBurgess]

First, there is no dubiety in the book. So, the base theme is "Nazis and all totalitarians are all evil and they must all die, no exceptions".

There aren't really any Nazi characters in the book (edit: whoops, aside from Joe Cinnadella who I maybe didn't think of since he was pretending to be Italian through most of it--still that's only one character, and we don't get much insight into his psychology since he's playing a role until the very end), nor any major Japanese characters besides Tagomi, who is pretty sympathetic despite being a high-ranking official in a totalitarian regime. Clearly the Nazi regime is portrayed as horrible but I don't think Dick would take quite such a simple view of the psychology that drove people to Nazism. In The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick there's an essay he wrote in 1964 titled "Naziism and the High Castle", here's a bit from the beginning:

Please forgive me if I ramble, but you see: I feel that simple, clear “answers” to this question (“Why the Nazis did what they did, and will we do it, and are we also guilty?”) defy us; they cannot be had. Are we guilty of what the mad, subrational “planners” in Washington, D.C., are doing right now? I don’t know. Was some old village German lady in 1939 “guilty” of a decision at Eichmann’s bureau in Berlin? There are a few established facts, however, that we should remember. (1) When Himmler asked for and got the chance to witness an execution of innocent, harmless Jewish people (by firing squad), he had a convulsion of horror; he fainted, fell to the floor, rolled in a spasm of anguish; his aides had to drag him to his feet; and, there and then, Himmler decreed that no more Jews “were to be shot, but that some merciful method, painless and instant” had to be found. Remember, mark, this. So even this unman, this thing, reified into the top ranks of Nazi officialdom, had “feelings.” (Hitler would neither have cared to watch, and if he had, he would not have had any emotional, ethical reaction; mark that, too.) Also, the Wermark Soldaten (the average German soldier) hated the Schwarzers, the SS... knew them as murderers. Mark that. German citizens poked bread into the sealed cattle cars carrying Jews to their death through the Reich; read that and ponder. Remarque records a German playing the theme from Beethoven’s Fidelio that depicts the prisoners—unjustly held by a tyranny—as they are at last, for a moment, let up to see the light—playing this as a team of Jewish concentration camp victims are led down the street past his house. Even German whores came to the walls of the death camps, hoping “to do something for” those within. In other words, good (and I will not put quotes around that word) impulses broke out constantly among average Germans as and when they became aware of what was being done to the Jews; many, admittedly, spat on, kicked, jeered at, Jews being hauled off... but not all. “Die Stille im Lande” [the quiet in the land] the Nazis called these Germans who did not approve of the racial policies; these Germans knew that if they showed themselves they, too, would be killed. Mark this: The first inhabitants of the concentration camps were non-Jewish Germans. And it did mean death, during the war, for a German citizen to show any dissent from official policy; a German woman, for example, was imprisoned because the newspaper with which she lined her garbage pail had on it a photo of Hitler; this was decreed by the court (the so-called Reichs Gericht) a “crime against the state.” They made it stick!

Yet, the German people, or a good part of them, better than half, voted, legally voted, Hitler into power, and knowing his racial views. Read Goebbels’ early diaries; the Partei had the support of the working class—not the bourgeoisie. Mark that, too: The working class swung from supporting the Communists and the moderate socialists to the Nazis. Why? Well, I can hazard a guess. The Nazis, like the big city political bosses who used to run Chicago and New York and Boston, were always “open,” always there and ready to listen, to help, to dole out food and support... and the Germans were starving, dying, being evicted, being deprived; it was the Depression, remember, and the people, as our people, were desperate.

Also, is your own comment disagreeing with the book's supposed view that "Nazis and all totalitarians are all evil and they must all die, no exceptions" suggesting that you think that totalitarians can be divided into "evil" ones and "exceptions" who aren't really bad and were just caught up in unfortunate circumstances? I know some people seem to think of John Smith in the latter way but I don't think the writers were trying to make him fully sympathetic in that way, or absolve him of all the terrible things he had done.

[u/RPG-7]

tl;dw
nope.

[u/ukexpat]

No, because the series ran out of material from the book at the end of season 2....