Essay Questions

The author asserts that every novel commences with “doubt and dislocation.” What does he mean?

Herman Melville opens what is often regarded as the Great American Novel, Moby-Dick, with the famous first-person introduction, “Call me Ishmael.” Not a lot can be gleaned from this opening line, yet it has attained legendary status. The reason, of course, is that by the time Ishmael has finished his tale, the reader knows enough about him to feel close enough to call him by his first name. What the reader knows about Ishmael on the first page and what they learn by the last involves an accumulation of information that forces a re-evaluation, a greater understanding, doubt, questions, the discovery of answers and a wealth of twists and turns. Every novel begins as a mystery regardless of how far from the genre of mystery novel it may be. This doubt about what is happening creates a sense of dislocation which the typical writer—but by no means all—attempt to reassert by story’s end.

Franz Kafka’s letter to his publisher issues a strong warning against including any illustration of any kind of the creature into Gregor Samsa transform in his story “The Metamorphosis.” Why might he have been so opposed to this idea?

Although various translations into English have altered or tailored Kafka’s original prose, the primary descriptive adjectives which Kafka applies to the bug-like creature that Samsa becomes is simply “enormous vermin.” Samsa’s actions are as this creature are described various as a kind scuttling and it is fairly apparent that the metamorphous changes him from an internal skeletal arrangement into possessing an exoskeleton. The test of the original is notably deficient in any description precise and specific enough to allow for a genuinely authentic illustrative depiction of what the author has in mind. Thus, the text is designed with the intent above all else for readers to picture in their own minds their own version of Samsa looks like. This is an exhibition of the author’s contention that what we see when we read is much more individualistic and based significantly less on what the writer actually provides than is usually thought.