Following on last month's request for recommendations of passive entertainment, today I'll talk to you about a book that traumatized me.
Like most, I was dragooned into reading "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka during high school and therefore predisposed to loathe.
I feel like this strange little book has symbolisms and hidden meanings that were just beyond my grasp when I read it. On the surface, The book is a story about alienation.
Existential literature is right up my alley but this fucking story shook me to my core in a way that I hated. As the reader you are forced to bare witness to the claustrophobic and grotesque existence of poor old Gregor Samsa, the protagonist, who is consigned to an unjustly liminal existence.
There is a specific scene involving apples which lead me to have the worst kind of surreal nightmares for a while.
Presently I am glad that I was assigned to read this dark classic.
In case you haven't read it and are curious, here's the opening paragraph:
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."