Author: SáT
Date: 10-09-05 05:59
The Man in the High Castle was the first novel by Dick I've read, ten-something years ago. Since that I've read great many other books by Dick, but -- well, they say the first is always special, probably that's why I've developed a very strong fondness for this rather poorly regarded masterpiece. Simply put, I love it (and I'm outraged each time I read those awful reviews about it).
One thing alone bugs me about the novel. Of all the questions that go unanswered, only one irritates me.
Why 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'? Why PKD gave this specific title to the book-within-the-book? Sure, I might just shrug, saying that "Well, he just I Chinged it out", but by now I'm obsessed with this question. The reviews and analyses I've found on the internet don't deal with this question in detail, if at all.
We only get one hint about the sentence: "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. That's a quote from the Bible." Actually, there's no such line in the most common translations of the Bible. The closest we have is in the Ecc 12:5:
"when men are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags himself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then man goes to his eternal home
and mourners go about the streets."
(New International version)
Other translations of the line include, but not limited to: "grasshopper is weighed down", "grasshopper shall be burden", "grasshopper loses its spring"; earlier translations (including my Hungarian Bible) say locust instead of grasshopper, but these versions call any such insect a locust anyway. Young's Literal sports "And the grasshopper is become a burden".
As you can see, there are actually two kinds of translations: either the grasshopper is burdened, either the grasshopper is the burden. The Ecc 12:5 is generally considered to be about the old age, but the part about the grasshopper is interpreted in two different ways: either the "old man drags himself along slowly," like a "dying grasshopper"; either the old man is so fragile that even "a little thing like a grasshopper" is a severe burden for him. I favour the first; the second is very awkward, while the the image of the dying grasshopper is very life-like and poetic (and Dick most probably chose the poetic version).
Now, as for the exact wording Dick used... "grasshopper lies heavy". English is not my mothertongue and (as you can see) my English is far from perfect. Thus even though I vaguely understand this line, I have a hard time figuring out exactly what does it mean, or what is its exact stylistical value. Am I right to assume that it might, with a little imagination, mean both interpretations listed above? (i.e. that the grasshopper is burdened or the grasshopper is the burden.) Knowing Dick, I'd assume that he used a very literal translation of a very early text, hence his different wording -- but I may be wrong altogether, and the line may be a very elaborate wordplay, mixing the Biblical line with... well, something.
The only theory about the GLH I encountered during my very modest research was in one of the hideous reviews; it said that the 'grasshopper' stands for the Eastern culture (read: Japan) that fails to take over America in the book-within-the-book -- I think this is bullshit, not only because it grossly disregards the Biblical reference (our only hint!), but also because the book-within-the-book deals mostly with Germany. Even though... I don't know.
The MHC deals with, to oversimplify it, the concept of Evil (Tagomi calls it so), more precisely the self-destruction the humanity's perpetually heading towards (cf the 'no time' concept of the Valis). The book-within-the-book seems to imply the same: it is supposed to end with Britain's victory over America, and we know that Churchill has grown tyrannical, the SD agent depicts a Nazi-ish dictator when talking about him; the Britons aren't the good guys anymore. It seems to me that the book-within-the-book says the same as the book, namely that the humanity is always heading towards destruction, no matter what; that would explain the choice of the verse, as the book's about a twilight period. On another level, the entire Ecclesiastics is fully in accordance with Dick's usual view about reality (all is vanity, eh?). But why that specific line? Why grasshopper? True enough, that line is the strongest part of the verse, (along with the 'almond tree blossoms'). But...
I don't know. I'm beginning to feel like a character from a PKD novel, with this obsessive search for an answer. The Empire never ended and the Grasshopper lies heavy. Anyhow. Help. Help me. Any ideas? Maybe somebody here could point out some primal sources, i.e. Dick speaking about the Grasshopper? Am I missing something terribly important? Am I completely off? Help this poor, confused young man who found this forum while searching for the Grasshopper.
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