The Man in the High Castle is one of Philip K. Dick’s most famous novels. In brief, it is set in a world in which the Axis Powers emerged victorious in World War Two, with the result that the United States has been split up into an East Coast occupied by Nazi Germany and a West Coast occupied by Imperial Japan with a so-called “neutral zone” situated between their respective territories. However, there is a book by the titular Man in the High Castle that tells of a world in which the Allies won World War Two as in real life, the reading of which is responsible for kickstarting some of the events of the novel.
In the Amazon Studios TV show of the same name, the book has been changed to a film reel, but the rest of the basic premise remains. The result is one of the best TV shows that can be found out there at the moment, whether viewers are interested in speculative fiction or not.
There are two main reasons that people should watch The Man in the High Castle:
Competent Execution
So far, The Man in the High Castle has received strong reviews based on a combination of solid performances, striking visuals, and an interesting plot. For proof, look at the number of award nominations that it has received for its two seasons, though it should be noted that it has not won a lot of them. Still, the nominations make it clear that The Man in the High Castle is respected by a fair amount of people, which is further supported by the fact that it is one of the most oft-streamed original series that can be found on Amazon Video. Summed up, if people choose to watch TV shows based on their reception, The Man in the High Castle seems like an excellent choice for their next series.
It’s Thought-Provoking
With that said, the more important reason to watch The Man in the High Castle might be the fact that it is thought-provoking. To understand this, it is important to bring up a scene in which one of the main characters meets a local sheriff wearing a Nazi armband because his truck has had a flat tire out on the road. There is some initial tension when the sheriff asks to see his papers, but that soon dies down when he is satisfied with what he sees, which leads to him helping the main character fix the flat tire. However, when the main character asks about the ash that is floating all around them, the sheriff responds that Tuesday is the day on which the local hospital burns people with disabilities as well as people with terminal illnesses, which is an unmistakable reference to what the Nazis did to people that they considered to be “undesirable.”
Due to this as well as other moments such as this, it can be said that The Man in the High Castle serves as a reminder that even the most outrageous of horrors can become a matter of mere routine with sufficient repetition. Combined with multi-faceted depictions for both German and Japanese characters, it points out that the people who made those regimes possible were not cackling caricatures but rather people – just people – which should encourage us to offer eternal resistance to our own worst impulses lest we wander down a dark road without hope of return.
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