Metamorphosis Reading Questions

1.     The defining characteristic to Gregor’s life prior to his metamorphosis is his job. He has no friends, and his family mooches off his money he gets from his job. The sole purpose of his life is to make money while doing his boring job he hates while being an outsider. After the metamorphosis, his defining characteristic is the annoyance and inconvenience he is to his family. Gregor loses his identity way before he changes. I would argue that right before he dies he actually regains an identity for loving his family.

2.     Yes, Gregor’s transformation into an insect is merely an extension of his life before. Before his transformation, he was an outsider. He did not socialize with any one and had no social skills. When he transformed into an insect, he physically became what he was before he transformed. Now he couldn’t socialize and talk to anyone.

3.     In Metamorphosis, the climax is in the first sentence when Gregor wakes up as an insect. The significance of this structure is to make us accustomed to the weirdness of the story. By starting off with Gregor turning into a bug, the other events in the story do not seem to be as odd and unnatural.

6. The ending of the story when the parents and daughter are going to the country is so odd because they suddenly forget about Gregor and focus right away on how the daughter should get married soon. It is strange how quickly they move on from the whole incident of living with a huge bug that was once Gregor. They are free from Gregor’s burden, which is why the text is written so lyrically compared to the rest of the text.

9. I think that Gregor transforms into a bug because it makes his realize the importance of his life. In the end of his life, right before he dies, he realizes that he does love his family and that his job was important to helping them. He understands that the importance of his life was to provide for his loved ones even though he did not realize that he loved them before.

10.  In my opinion, I agree with the statement that Gregor’s alienation is an extension of the rage Kafka felt towards his own father. Kafka, like Gregor, felt alienated from his family and especially his father whom he disliked very much. Kafka was very isolated because he was an intellectual and a Jew, so it was hard for him to find friends. Like Gregor, Kafka was alienated from much of society. In the novel, the narrator explains that “admittedly no one pay[s] attention to him” (46). At this point in the novel, Gregor is climbing over to his sister while she is playing the violin, and no one in the room notices him. This represents how Kafka feels around his one family. He especially feels this from his overbearing father who forced him to get a degree in law and to have a boring job at a government workers’ financial office. His overbearing father is much like Gregor’s overbearing father who only focuses on the debt Gregor is fixing for them. Gregor is stuck in the job because of the debt much like Kafka is stuck in his boring job because of his father’s pressure.

Gone Girl Review

The movie Gone Girl recently came out in theaters and was a huge hit. In general, the movie followed the plot of the book. It started out with Nick taking a relaxing morning and then getting a call from his neighbor that his cat was outside and the door was open. When he got home, he found a scene that made him think someone stole his wife. He called the police and it turned into an investigation for his missing wife. As the movie progressed, the police and public began to blame Nick for the murder. He was not only acting unsympathetic about his wife, but many clues led to him. During the beginning half of the movie, Amy speaks aloud what she wrote in her diary, and the audience also starts to believe Nick really did kill Amy. However, once Nick figures out all of her clues for her annual treasure hunt, he figures out that she is messing with him, and that she is trying to get him killed. After this realization, it shows Amy on the highway gleefully throwing her pens out the window.

The rest of the movie shows both Amy’s side and Nicks side rather than just from Nick’s point of view. Amy ends up losing all her money and having to call Desi, her long time “friend”, to save her. Then she uses him to get back home and blames him for everything (not to mention she also kills him). Meanwhile, Nick does interviews to help his case and to try to get Amy to come home. Once she does come home, she manipulates the police into believing everything she says and convinces Nick to never leave. She also uses the sperm donor place to get herself pregnant.

The book and the movie were very similar. As I said before, they followed the same plot and no characters were changed in any way. However, I think the director did a good job at making the movie a new experience for readers, which is hard to do. The director still got the sense of unreliable narrators as in the book. Just like in the book, you choose sides and change those sides of characters as the movie progresses.

However, the movie and the book were different in some ways. In the movie, after it shows Amy on the highway safe, she has to give an overview of what she did to get there. She basically tells us everything she did in the background. In the book we get to figure it out as she does it. Also, the movie did not go into the other people she screwed over in her earlier years. They chopped out the part of when Nick finds out the real story of her stalker best friend.

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. I think the characters were really well casted. Rosamund Pike, who played Amy, did a wonderful job at showing how insane Amy is and how she is a psychopath. Her facial expressions were spot on. I also think Ben Afflick did a great job at showing how Nick did care about Amy but didn’t seem like he did to the public. As a viewer, I really felt for him when he was getting blamed for everything. My favorite part of the movie was when Amy was driving on the highway because she looked so cool and by then we knew that she was doing this all because Nick cheated on her. All girls want to be able to figure out a way to ruin a cheaters life and she did it perfectly. However, I did not like how they lived in an extremely nice house. They were supposed to be almost broke and the town was supposed to be run-down.

Oldboy!!!!

Oldboy is a South Korean film that follows the life of a man named Oh Dae-su. He is a man that is imprisoned for fifteen years without knowing the reasons why. During the film when he is finally released, he decides to figure out why he was imprisoned. While figuring this out, he falls in love with a woman who works at a sushi restaurant. Also, his captor is continuously communicating with him to lead him to new clues and to remind him that he only has a limited amount of time to figure it out. It turns out that Dae-su went to school with his captor as a boy and watched something that he was not supposed to. He saw his captor making love with his sister in the upper room of the school. It is not exactly mentioned that he spread the word to everyone, but the captor makes it seem as though the entire school found out about his and his sister’s relationship. Consequently, his sister kills herself by jumping off a bridge and the captor blames Dae-su for the entire event. The captor wanted Dae-su to suffer, and he definitely did while prisoning him, and for eternity as well; Dae-su fell in love with his daughter.

         The most obvious and pointed out theme in the movie is vengeance. The captors motive to destroy Dae-su’s life was based only on getting revenge for something that happened to him many years ago when in reality Dae-su is not even that responsible for his sisters death. Vengeance is also closely related to violence, and in this movie there is a lot of violence. There are beatings, fights, guns, and knives that make this movie a gory film. The film’s violence is made to create repulsive feelings, however, many scenes that are violent could have been a lot more graphic. For example, in Dae-su’s first fight scene on the street he beats up a group of guys but the camera cuts off after a few punches. The director uses this technique to create an emotional response in the audience without showing too much blood.

         Another theme is incest. The captor is in love with his sister and had a sexual relationship with her. He felt upset that she killed herself and he had to blame it on someone, so he blamed it on Dae-su. To make revenge on him, he got Dae-su to fall in love with his daughter, and to have sex with her. He then tapes them having sex and plays it for Dae-su once he finds out about his lover. Knowing that he had sex with his child made him feel the greatest guilt and sadness. Incest is against all morals and Dae-su understands that. The worst part is that they are in love, which makes it hard for them to separate forever because they have feelings for each other.

         Hitchcock influenced the movie Oldboy in many ways. One of the most prevalent is how Oldboy’s mise en sce`ne is dreary and heavy stylized much like Hitchcock’s films. The film uses shadows and camera angles to create a scene that is abstract and interesting. For example, while Dae-su is fighting men in an ally, the audience’s view is from the inside of the wall to see him fighting each man and seeing their profiles. The long shot is impossible to create in real life, because in real life it would be impossible to see from inside the wall. Although it is not realistic, it creates a great effect on the viewer, which is a common aspect in Hitchcock’s films as well. The shadowing in this scene is also highly exaggerated. 

         I enjoyed the film for the most part. It was interesting and fun to watch even though a few scenes were extremely graphic. The ending was unexpected, yet it was very clever. I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes graphic and messed up films.

        

About Time

This is one of my favorite movies. It will make you cry, laugh, and feel romantic all within two hours (plus Rachel McAdams is in it and who doesn't love her?).

The Birds

I have to say this was one of the most horrific movies I've ever seen. My friend once told me that The Birds is the reason she flips out when a flock flies above her. I was intrigued to find out what she meant. When I first started the movie it seemed silly and outdated. The graphics were terrible and the characters seemed  like two-dimensional typical horror-film characters: the perfect blonde, the handsome lawyer, and the jealous school teacher. Only till the end did I realize that each character had come to life. And only till the last couple scenes did I realize how scared I was. Hitchcock captured the sense of utter frustration and fear put together. When Melanie was getting attacked in the room, you could feel her desperation trying to open the door. You could also feel the bond that the mother and Melanie created as they locked eyes in the final scene. Why did I not think of this as cheesy? I don't know. Hitchcock just has that capability of making you feel that way. At the ending, the girl said, "can we bring the birds? they never hurt anyone." There is definitely some big meaning behind that but I can not figure it out yet. Another brilliant yet frustrating part is the ending! Why did we never figure out why the birds came at the same time Melanie came to the town? Why are they killing humans? I will get back to you on my theories. As for now enjoy this picture of  a Melanie costume.

Highlights From The Shining