Philip K. Dick's Time Out Of Joint

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Philip K. Dick’s novel, Time Out of Joint, takes place in an artificially created 1950s town in a dystopian 1990s society. Published in 1959, those who feared the Communist threat of a third world war criticized Dick’s novel for its topical references. In making “time out of joint” in his novel, Dick blurs the line between fiction and reality by distorting the narrative structure and employing the symbolism of words to satirize 1950s American society’s fear of and consequent willful ignorance of the unknown as well as the arbitrary nature of things themselves. As power and moral authority shift, the reader questions the postmodernist novel’s world, instilling a sense of doubt and curiosity. Dick uses the slips of paper to expose the symbolism …show more content…
In the beginning of the novel, authority is in the hands of the makers of the fictional society, one of whom is Bill Black, as they know the truth: that it is actually 1997 and that the town is not real; however, as Ragle discovers the truth and the reality hidden behind the falsities, authority shifts to him as he now has full control over himself. Even though at the end of the novel, the people of the “real world” fight over authority over the Earth, moral authority remains with Ragle as he has full control over his beliefs and actions. Dialogue between Vic and Ragle towards the end of the novel exemplifies this moral authority: “Why did you go over to them?’ Vic said. ‘Because they are right,’ Ragle said. ‘And the isolationists are wrong” (Dick 215). The beliefs of Bill Black and the advocates of “One Happy Earth” no longer control Ragle; he has full control over his beliefs; he has the moral authority in a world where official authority is lost. This situation has a direct connection to the society in which Dick wrote Time Out of Joint: the 1950s and McCarthyism. Power over people’s lives was in the hands of a few men, McCarthy and his men, as they created a world where people avidly believed their lives to be true; they did this to keep people loyal to a cause – the reelection of McCarthy and the bolstering of his career. Dick alludes to Murrow’s exposure of the lies of McCarthy as Ragle uncovers the fiction in his reality. So how does the reader feel about this shift in power? As the authority shifts from person to person, the reader begins to have doubts about what is reality and what is fiction. This creates a feeling of curiosity in the reader – a yearning to know what is real and what is false in
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