Saturday, January 17, 2015
It's a monstrous vermon, it's an insect, it's a... cockroach reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez?
In class, we discussed what Gregor could possibly look like when he wakes up and discovers he's a cockroach. Well, I decided to google it, and I discovered this rough sketch of young Gregor reading One Hundred Years of Solitude! I thought it was ironic, and also suiting, since Kafta influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I thought I would share it with y'all, so here it is!
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4 comments:
I think this is really cool too! Kafka truly is a precursor to the formal magical realist movement since he is after all using scenarios that don't happen in real life - unless you've waken up as a bug before - and had the characters react casually to them. Much like children are just born with pig tails and the mom is like, "gosh dang it not again," he introduces these topics as mere facts, not really anything to worry about other than it disrupting normal life.
This is beautiful! But why a cockroach? I don't understand reading the Metamorphosis and thinking Gregor is a cockroach. It never says he is a cockroach. The anatomical descriptions sprinkled throughout the narrative imply that he is a beetle, not a cockroach.
I also agree that the idea of Gregor turning into a battle definitely represents magical realism, and not only does Gregor just act casually about the fact that he has turned into an insect, but most importantly, he accepts that as a reality. He doesn't question it or even doubt that he is not dreaming. I think that this really does pave the way for magical realism, as Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude makes the reader question reality by making his characters accept events so easily that seem impossible to us because of our fixed view of reality.
I also think it's interesting how the room was painted so that a cockroach would blend in. A beetle however would probably stand out, depending on the color. I love this painting though because it represents the absurdity of Kafka's calm and rational narration of the magical realism present in the work. Other than the cockroach, the painting looks to be a boring old home, but when we look at the cockroach involved, it becomes absurd. When we read, the calm narration implies that everyone just accepts that he turned into a cockroach, but when we think about it it's just absurd. I even thought he was dreaming, partially because I assumed this piece was romantic.
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