“I Am in Here”: A Comparative Reading of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis
Abstract
Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915), with Gregor Samsa’s transformation “into a gigantic insect”, forms an insightful comparative reading to the opening of Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), including Hal Incandenza’s seeming, unexplained catatonia. Wallace described Kafka’s fiction as conducting a “radical literalization of truths we tend to treat as metaphorical”. In comparing Kafka’s novella and Infinite Jest, the question ‘what has happened to Hal?’ thus means: what metaphor is literalized by Hal’s situation? In both texts, the metaphors represent selfhood and writing fiction; but, contrary to Gregor, Hal has taken up the task of self-becoming and symbolizes literary disclosure and communication – rendering Infinite Jest as a redemptive novel.
Submitted: Sept. 16, 2021 | Accepted: Dec. 7, 2021 | Published March 16, 2022 | Language: en
Keywords Role of literature • Alienation • Infinite Jest • Franz Kafka • David Foster Wallace • The Metamorphosis • Self-becoming • Communication • Acknowledgment
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Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/EL/2420-823X/2021/08/002