A ficção científica como escrita de poder ideológico: leituras a partir de O Homem do Castelo Alto, de Philip K. Dick

Abstract

The relationship between a work of fiction and empirical reality is much more intense than is sometimes thought. A work of science fiction can portray, for example, in a symbolic way, subjects of the reader's daily life. Thus, we talk about science fiction as a writing of ideological power and its ability to reflect social and political issues, for example, discussing about our world without representing it directly, but through artifice such as time travel and parallel universes. Thus, our general objective is to evidence the commonly unrecognized depth of the genre "science fiction" through the study of The Man in the High Castle, by Dick (2012), as well as The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a meta-fiction book present within the work of Dick (2012), evaluating its relations with the reality observed outside the work of fiction, and the different reactions of its readers and the reasons why. In making use of the methodological tools of Literary Theory and interdisciplinary dialogue, we first contemplate the study of fiction, with authors such as Eco (1994), Perrone-Moisés (2006) and Wood (2011), and science fiction, with Jameson (2005) and Roberts (2002), as well as the biography of Dick, to present then the novel The Man in the High Castle. Then, a historical study of World War II, based on Fidelis and Rito (2011) and Fiorani (2009), showing its relevance to the construction of the work of fiction, and enter into discussions of society, culture and borders in the work of Dick (2012). Later, we study two works of literature in The Man in the High Castle, which are the I Ching, a real book, and The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a fictitious book, to evaluate the reactions of the readers of this second work according to their national and ideological differences. Finally, we observe a last novum in Dick's work (2012), which expresses once more the possibilities of the genre of science fiction.