The Man In The High Castle

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is a novel within a novel. If The Man in the High Castle is an alternative history novel that imagines what might have happened if Germany and Japan won World War II, then The Grasshopper Lies Heavy plays a similar role in the world of The Man in the High Castle. The characters of The Man in the High Castle are intrigued by the book's central idea that Germany and Japan lost World War II. Rather than presenting the “actual” history, however, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy imagines an alternative route to victory for the Allies and a radically different post-war world in which Great Britain continues to operate as the world's sole empire, committing many further atrocities that echo the actions of Nazi Germany in the alternative reality of The Man in the High Castle. In this respect, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is an important symbol for the novel's themes about the subjectivity of history and the role of fate.

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is a symbol for the subjectivity of history because the alternative history the novel explores resonates with so many readers. Juliana reads The Grasshopper Lies Heavy and feels as though she is accessing a world more real than her own. To her, this version of history seems more authentic. The novel symbolizes how subjective views and experiences of history and reality can resonate more with people than supposedly objective and authentic alternatives. Juliana understands her reality, in which Germany and Japan won the war, but she embraces the idea that this is not a universal truth. Somewhere, something else might have happened. Juliana would like to believe that another, better world is possible, and the novel satisfies this desire for Juliana. Coupled with Tagomi's brief venture into an alternative timeline, the novel hints that Juliana's interpretation might be correct. Rather than a work of fiction, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is a work of subjective nonfiction. It describes a real, authentic world, just not one the characters happen to inhabit at this moment in time.

Juliana confronts Abendsen, who confesses that he wrote the novel by consulting the I Ching. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy plays into the novel's themes of fate and agency by removing the responsibility of the author for writing the book. Rather than write the novel in the conventional sense, Abendsen consulted an esoteric fortune-telling device and interpreted its answers. He was a passive player in the construction of a novel that appeared to him out of the ether. As such, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy was a product of fate rather than the will of one individual. At the same time, the patterns of history described in the novel closely resemble many that the characters know and understand from their own history. Joe comments that the British Empire described in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy commits many of the same crimes and brutalities that the Germans or Japanese commit in his understanding of history. These episodes of violence seem destined to happen; the only thing that changes is the identity or the nationality of the individuals perpetrating the violence. In this respect, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy symbolizes the lack of agency the characters have over their own fate. They subscribe to the universality of a novel that was transcribed rather than written and tells them that the most violent moments in human history are destined to happen, regardless of their actions.