mr. mxylplyx

What was said about him in class the other day though is definitely true: it helps a lot to appreciate his work to be coming from the mindset we already are engaged in in analyzing dream content. This is particularly true for "The Meditation," which is particularly and obviously dream-like, with its rambling absurdity that has all the feel of a spontaneous dream. I have to admit that though I found this and the previous piece we read, "A Country Doctor," interesting for their dream-like landscapes and absurd narrative flows, I did not find them to be great works of art, probably because they seem so random, and, if you think of them in terms of dreams, ordinary. In "The Judgement," however, Kafka displays the full capacity of his genius, and the potential of his oneiric style. In this story, full of liminal tension between states of consciousness and self-awareness, Kafka uses pacing and a deep self-conscious reflecting, but seemingly fully aware mood, to set up the almost imperceptible transition that takes place later in his story, as the consciousness from whose point of view we see the story unfold becomes enveloped in something that is not the real world at all, but like a darkside of his own fears, crawling out of his very mind and shaking its fetters in full horrific display in front of him. There is at first a disturbing, inarticulated feeling in the final scene in the father's room, where we feel, like the characters of ancient Celtic legend, we have somehow, without noticing it, journeyed into the otherworld where things do not behave as they should. The father who we thought was crazy and old, in need of help, is seeing into the very heart of his son. He is madly lucid, and erupts out of his bed in front of us like a mad vision erupts from our minds when sleeoing, throwing all our neglected, supressed, and misunderstood fears into clear, bold faced relief. We are faced with the horror that we are in the twilight zone, and the biggest part of that horror is that everyone else but us knew that we were here all along!! Nothing is sane or rational. The character's innermost thoughts and fears are read, have been read in fact, and though hidden from himself by his own mind, they are known by him who knew him all along, the father who played possum, let him hang himself with his own rope, and only now at the end, when he thinks himself safe, in charge of his life, ready to grow beyond the limits of his past, confronts him with his true self and shows him what he has been hiding. The delivering of the emotional impact is profound, disturbing, and mad, and the climatic dispair that we are left with with the suicide at the end not only serves to etch the impression of the emotion on our minds but make us wonder at the power of own subconsciousness... and also fear it.