vitaminc

In Joyce’s novels, I was able to survive his stream-of-conscious style only by pretending he wrote his stories on a drug high and by not looking for sense, his stories somehow started to make a little more sense. As someone mentioned in class, Kafka’s stories would have been more difficult to understand if not for the preconception of dreams.

We were given an exercise in class on Kafka; I was not able to come up with much, but I thought I would share it anyway just to see if there would be any thoughts on this. Please see the passage below, if you’re interested:

I chose my scene from “The Country Doctor” – it’s the one where the servant girl, Rose, is running around in the snow trying to borrow a horse for the doctor while he stands “forlorn” in the warmth of his house. This scene caught my attention because of the role reversal; usually, it’s the other way around, where the man is out in the elements. In terms of Freud, Jung and Hartman, I thought the theory that worked best was Freud (since this is Kafka, of course). Freud’s wish-fulfillment works very smoothly in terms of the relationship between the doctor and Rose. In terms of what did not work, I tried to use Jung’s dream/unconscious imago and treat Rose as a figure of projection (i.e. sexuality, etc), but I was not able to make it fit. If anyone has any other ideas, please feel free to share them.