In the life we live in and the stories that have been written about life, the cruel truth has been hidden by the humorous words authors of the genre, magical realism. The stories can be perceived in whatever way but they don’t just put in the humor and irony for no reason, they are wanting us to take a personal lesson from the stories and learn from them. The lessons we learn can be about ourselves in the way we treat others and how we treat ourselves. Also, life situations that happen everyday and how we can solve them.
Magical realism may be just goofy stories to the common eye but some see a lesson worth learning. Magical realism is a genre that makes us take a double take at what we’re reading and think why would they put this into a story when it makes no sense. The goal of the author is to be able to take out the goofy details and have the story make sense and understand the lesson the author is trying to portray. Even though the authors can get out of hand like in Gogol’s “The Nose” story on how a man’s nose magically comes off his face and becomes a talking and walking person.
Gogol makes this know in part 2 “Merely–you are my own nose. My dear sir, you speak in error,” was its reply. “I am just myself–myself separately. ” Gogol is trying to say here that the man that has lost his nose that is now off his face is of a high status and has become its own person, Kovalev the one that lost the nose he before was to be perceived as a playboy but after he lost his nose he is just an ordinary guy. His nose was what made him attractive to the public eye and now he can’t get married like he wants to except to an ugly woman.
At the end of the story Kovalev gets his nose back and goes back to his old ways of only caring about looks and nothing else, he ends up learning nothing from this experience. So by using the nose off of Kovalevs face as the symbol of selfishness in that Kovalev only cares for looks, so even by using a walking, talking nose to show the lesson of the story you can see what the author wanted to get across and that’s that some people just won’t change no matter what they go through or if they have been punished for their actions before.
Another work that is found to have the transformation of people through an odd occurrence is The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. In the story the main character that goes by the name of Gregor suddenly wakes up one morning to find that he has transformed into a bug, but the fact that he is indeed a bug he feels he must go to work for his family.
His whole family is very lazy and he has to get the money for them, so after Gregor changes to a bug they are all rather shocked in the beginning but slowly begin not to care about him and basically shun him from the family by locking him in his room. With this said you can see a change of the family towards Gregor just because of this change and he is no longer useful to them, this shows the families true colors by the end of the story.
At one point in the story his father hurts Gregor by throwing an apple at him and it gets lodged in his back but in the story it says “No one dared to remove the apple lodged in Gregor’s flesh so it remained there as a visible reminder of his injury”, his family are so disgusted with what he has become they won’t help him even in a moment of pain just because of the way he looks. People judge each other most of the time on the way they look even though they don’t want to admit it but if you saw someone with a lot of piercings and tattoos you would think they are bad news right?
That’s not always the case they might be the nicest person you’re ever going to meet it is also the innocent appearance that can fool us also, we always think that they are the best people in the world if they look nice. Honestly the innocent appearance can be the most dangerous, now going back to Gregor’s situation before the story we can assume that he was a pretty good worker and earned good pay for his family and that he is a good big brother and son.
After the story progresses we see that his family is slowly pushing him out of the picture, basically they want nothing to do with him because of his appearance. As stated before because of Gregor’s appearance it’s like his isn’t their son or brother anymore but it’s not like he has changed on the inside, his personality, the way he treats people he is still the same Gregor and that is what his family overlooked and most of the people in the story overlooked. Just because he looks different doesn’t mean he isn’t the same Gregor they loved before.
People in today’s society need to look over magical realism works and take in the oddly refreshing information. Magical realism does show a life lesson in a strange way with strange situations, and words but still somehow the authors get their points across. The authors are writing these stories for a reason just like all other authors they want you to take a lesson away from their text, whether it be a small message or a life changing message the reader takes away their work.
It is so very true that Magical Realism is strange most of the time but the strangeness just adds the oomph the story needs, their goal is to be able to take the strange, silly stuff out and still have the story have a strong meaning behind it. The most realist thing you can take away from a goofy story like “The Nose” or “The Metamorphosis” is the powerful message behind the words on the page of that book or the screen of your computer. That powerful message is what makes Magical Realism, Magical Realism.
