Last year I read a book called Kafka on the Shore, written by Haruki Murakami. I immediately like his style of writing, and it wasn't until I started reading Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis this year that I realized the direct connection (other than the obvious reference to Franz Kafka in the title): dream-like. If you haven't heard of or read any of Murakami's books, he is a Japanese writer (so his books are also all translated) who writes about crazy dream like worlds, and he was recognized with the Franz Kafka Award in 2006. So obviously you can guess that his books are probably pretty similar to Franz Kafka's in its ability to create these dream-like situations and the weird logic. Kafka on the Shore was filled with creepy men who killed cats, talking cats, and a 15 year old's (he calls himself Kafka) journey running away from home. All in which time seems to be irrelevant. This description of the book definitely seems a lot more mystical than The Metamorphosis, who's plot seems at first glance pretty realistic with the change of one single variable (that Gregor became a bug) rather than a bunch of different variables. However, I found one really interesting thing about these two stories.
We touched on in class recently, that the end of The Metamorphosis was sort of like a reverse metamorphosis. In the last line of the novel, Grete (Gregor's sister) "lifted herself up and stretched her young body (110)." Which shows the family undergoing their own metamorphosis, but in the opposite sense that Gregor underwent. They were finally getting to actually live their lives, and riding themselves of the alienation that Gregor caused them. I'm sure plenty of people would love to see a continuation of The Metamorphosis in this sense or another story where a bug wakes up as a human. Which is the way Murakami writes his novel.
In Murakami's novel, he really addresses this situation. Murakami takes the idea of a bug waking up as a human rather than the other way around, although much more symbolically. Kafka (the character in Kafka on the Shore) basically interacts with everything as if he's just been made into a human and in some way's there's the "clean background" trick that Baker uses in The Mezzanine. But it's not that easy to spot, because the main character doesn't physically change from bug to human, he is discovering so much that could be tied with this reverse metamorphosis.
In Murakami's novel, he really addresses this situation. Murakami takes the idea of a bug waking up as a human rather than the other way around, although much more symbolically. Kafka (the character in Kafka on the Shore) basically interacts with everything as if he's just been made into a human and in some way's there's the "clean background" trick that Baker uses in The Mezzanine. But it's not that easy to spot, because the main character doesn't physically change from bug to human, he is discovering so much that could be tied with this reverse metamorphosis.
It was really interesting to read Kafka after reading Kafka on the Shore, and if anyone really enjoyed Kafka, I would highly recommend Haruki Murakami books.
Murakami is probably the most "Kafkaesque" of contemporary novelists, and this is true of his works that don't explicitly namedrop Kafka in the title. I recently posted to my blog a couple of works that take "The Metamorphosis" as a point of departure, and I could have added to it a recent short story by Murakami, "Samsa in Love" (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/28/samsa-in-love), which appeared in _The New Yorker_. It's about an insect who wakes up one day in a human body.
ReplyDeleteI have never read anything by Murakami, but I have heard that he is a very good writer. I thought it was cool that you connected a book we are reading in English to a book you had read outside of class. It was interesting to read.
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