Tag: Franz Kafka

The Real Nightmare Begins When You Wake Up

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

You don’t wake up from a nightmare; you wake into one. This is one of the first things we learn from reading Franz Kafka’s works.

In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa wakes up from a nightmare to find himself in one far worse than the one he was dreaming: he discovers that he has metamorphosed into a monstrous insect. In The Trial, Joseph K. wakes up to find himself arrested without committing a crime or doing anything wrong. In The Castle, K. is woken by a young man who, out of nowhere, tells him that he needs permission from the Castle to sleep where he is already sleeping because everything, including the inn, belongs to the Castle.

When you scratch the surface of (the experienced) reality, the Kafkaesque is what you’ll get. The Kafkaesque is this ridiculously complex and illogical universe that the simulation (i.e., world) we’re in is based on. Everything in the simulation is logical and can be explained to a five-year-old until you look at the code.

The simulation we’re in is the experienced reality but not reality itself, (and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a computer simulation). As Kant would put it, it is the phenomenon but not the noumenon. The simulation hides the nightmarish qualities of the Kafkaesque, which lies beneath the surface of the experienced reality and is where what doesn’t make sense doesn’t make sense again.

In the world of our experienced reality, we live as if everything makes sense, but we’re just not thinking about it at the moment, when, in reality, experienced reality will collapse as soon as we start thinking about it. That’s how you scratch its surface, by THINKING. “Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined,” Albert Camus writes in The Myth of Sisyphus. When we start to think (to doubt), we will find ourselves standing next to Descartes, losing our minds (actually, losing everything but our minds) in a world created by some evil genius. “I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colors, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this evil genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity,” writes Descartes in Meditations on First Philosophy.

When what doesn’t make sense doesn’t make sense again, that’s when we know we’re on our way to (re)discover the [what?].

Between experienced reality and reality itself, there is the Kafkaesque. All those who “exit” the simulation find themselves in it. Waking up in the Kafkaesque, however, does not mean you’re fully awake. The first time you wake up, you enter the nightmare. But the journey doesn’t end there. Beyond the nightmare, another world awaits…

Unfortunately, like Kafka’s protagonists, we eventually always choose to continue living as usual even in the nightmare, as if the status quo was never disturbed, as if everything unquestionably makes sense, as if “it’s just the way the world works”, as if “this is life”, as if there are no other ways to live than default living. That’s what makes the Kafkaesque truly Kafkaesque, living ordinarily even when we find ourselves in the extraordinary.

And just as a captive who in sleep enjoys an imaginary liberty, when he begins to suspect that his liberty is but a dream, fears to awaken, and conspires with these agreeable illusions that the deception may be prolonged, so insensibly of my own accord I fall back into my former opinions, and I dread awakening from this slumber…

— Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

This piece was first published on my Substack on March 25, 2026.

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan Book Review

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan (Review)

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

After reading the opening lines of Ian McEwan’s The Cockroach, I was immediately, and expectedly, reminded of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.” The initial pages of the book are, broadly put, “Metamorphosis” inverted. However, even though Kafka readers will positively be entertained reading McEwan’s work, the story itself is not Kafkaesque — we do not really feel that we are in one of Kafka’s nightmares. Jim Sams, the main character of The Cockroach, is not ‘struck by the absurd,’ as Albert Camus would have put it. Moreover, the story’s aim is not to answer, “What would happen if a cockroach turns into a man?”  That’s merely the first 15 or so pages of the book. After that, The Cockroach crosses the perimeters of “The Metamorphosis” to become something else — a political satire.

There are significant differences between Jim Sams of The Cockroach and Gregor Samsa of “Metamorphosis,” but one of the differences is much more significant than the rest. When Gregor Samsa is metamorphosed into an insect, he is still the same person. He does not adopt the insect’s character, its mind, or its memories. On the other hand, when Jim Sams becomes human, he remembers who he was as a cockroach — he is still himself — but he also has access to the mind and memories of the human body he now pilots. But that’s not all. The story becomes more interesting (and frightening) when we discover that the cockroach who now controls the human body of Britain’s prime minister has a political agenda.

Jim Sams wants to transform Britain into a ‘Reversalist’ country. We are introduced to the concept of ‘Reversalism’ in the second chapter of the book. Concisely, it means reversing the money flow. “At the end of a working week, an employee hands over money to the company for all the hours that she has toiled. But when she goes to the shops, she is generously compensated at retail rates for every item she carries away.” And Jim Sams does everything in his power to achieve that.

Overall, McEwan’s The Cockroach is a good book to read, whether you have read Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” or not.  However, I think that the people who will enjoy this book most are the ones who are familiar with things like Donald Trump and his Twitter account, Brexit, the Me Too movement, et cetera.