Well, not really. I was flipping through my notes from class the other day, and I stumbled upon "real paranoia" scribbled on the page. I think paranoia is definitely a Kafkaesque trait, and though I don't see it at work as much in The Metamorphosis (or "The Metamorphosis", according to your position on the novel/short story debate), I definitely see it in Mr. Mitchell's description of Kafka's other books (if I remember correctly, The Trial was one that seemed particularly full of paranoia). This whole idea of "a cosmic joke" being played on you by the universe; someone who has authority over your life but you can't, for the life of you, figure out who it is; the idea that you're always being watched. That's what kind of reminded me of Inception.
Not with regards to content, per se, but the idea that there are some ideas that you just cannot think about. If you start thinking about them, you won't be able to live your life normally anymore. (I suppose this is also true of The Matrix.) These ideas are things like, "you are always being watched," "everything is a dream," "this is actually not real life," etc. Once you start to think in this way, you go down in a spiral of confusion and paranoia and you might never be able to get it out of your head that you're living in a dream.
This really has very little to do with the book, but I think it's so weird to think about ideas like this, and how somebody with an already disturbed disposition could run with an idea like this, and eventually go crazy from the paranoia. These are just the cheery thoughts I have on a quiet Wednesday evening.
1 comment:
You're right that paranoia doesn't feature as largely in _The Metamorphosis_ as it does in some of Kafka's other works, but we do see it in the opening scenes--at first, Gregor's fear of the consequences of being late (or, rather, not quite as *early*) for work for the first time in five years seems totally overblown. A guy can take a sick day, can't he? But then when the manager shows up at his home (and it's what, like six or seven in the morning? his mother's still in her sleepwear with her hair dishevelled), his paranoia seems to be confirmed. Also, the whole transformation thing brings up the idea of being the subject of some horrible cosmic joke.
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