During discussions of The Metamorphosis, the story and plot is often described as "dream-like" or "nightmarish." These were mostly in response to how Gregor was like a dead person watching the living, trapped in a body through which he could not connect with his family in any way. But to me, it also seems that the way that Gregor narrates is also somewhat dreamy. The way he sees everything his family does for him as so nice and sweet, how his dear little sister tries to find out what he likes, and offers him different food, or how the family leaves the door open so he can watch them from under the coach. It seems that at the beginning of the book we see everything through a lens that bends our perspective. It's like Gregor wakes up and has to adapt to his new vision (as bugs have those eyes that have lots of little eyes inside) so he does not perceive things exactly, but as he gets used to it, he becomes more and more aware of reality for what it really is. Or, another analogy: sometimes when people wake up, they have some sort of film over their eyes that they have to blink away so that they can see clearly. This is usually portrayed in movies as the character opens his eyes and we see from his perspective and its blurry right away but then everything comes into focus. Same thing with Gregor, his perception is dreamlike, and blurry, just like our vision is right after we wake up. Then as time goes by, he becomes more keen on what's really going on, and what seemed like a sweet dream is really turning out to be a grotesque nightmare where chaos is about to break loose.
Of course, that may just be over-reading the text. Yet I think that there is potential for the novels narration to have that same aspect of dreaminess and haziness. It is almost as if the whole book is following the process of a waking mind several seconds after deep sleep. At first, everything is oddly strange, yet acceptable. Gregor seems very fine with the fact that he is a bug. Then the first nerve senses start kicking in when he realizes he is late for work. The parents start knocking from different doors, symbolizing the different neurons sending shocks and signals through different stems. The moment that Gregor gets up to the moment he opens the door stand in for that split second where the brain cell has to adjust to the string of incoming signals, and as the door opens, it is ready to work. The months that go by show us the seconds during which the brain cell just works at it, getting used to the different types of signals, and readjusting to fit its needs. By midway of the story, we are starting to reach moments where the brain cells are being attacked by huge amounts of information, and are having a hard time coping with it all. The story goes in months, but really it parallels with the very first seconds of waking up; the transition from the dreamlike haven to the chaotic reality.
I guess that this book could have a lot of different interpretations. And that is what makes it so interesting, as we can find so many different analogies and structures withing the plot, and the smallest of details can warp our views into the most bizarre interpretations.
1 comment:
It's hard to list *all* of the way's Kafka's fictional world is "dreamlike," there are so many. But you're touching on an important one here: in dreams, the emotional content is often familiar and revealing of one's true (conscious or subconscious) feelings. The family's general reaction to the situation in many ways seems so "off," and Gregor's acceptance of his abjection so total--despite the surface absurdity, there's something very real about the way Gregor sees himself in relation to his parents here. To *us* this looks distorted and "wrong" (why he's *so* grateful to his sister for the kitchen scraps, for example, and generally so understanding of why they can't bear the sight of him), and there is a "dreamlike" distortion of familiar proportion here. But dreams call out for interpretation, and in this case, much is revealed about Gregor in his "distorted" perceptions. The creepiest part of this story, perhaps, is the sense that rather *little* changes, essentially, in this family dynamic despite the radical transformation.
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