"The habits of our lives make us presume that things will happen in a certain foreseeable way, that there will be a vague coherence in the world. Now, reality appears to be changed, unreal. When a man awakens, or dies, he is slow to free himself from the terrors of the dream, from the worries and manias of life. Now it will be hard for me to break the habit of being afraid of these people."
I also thought of this story as a bit of a mystery because of the time we spend with the narrator trying to decipher why his lonely but otherwise coherent life has been turned upside down. He names several theories for what might be happening to him (sick and hallucinating, alien beings, so on). Did you give credence to any particular idea before the mystery of Morel's invention was unveiled?
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I definitely thought he was crazy, seeing and hearing things inaccurately. I thought the book led us in that direction pretty strongly.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Ben. I thought it suggested he was hallucinating at times and that was not necessarily inconsistent with what he was seeing by Morel.
ReplyDelete(By the way, I found it kind of exasperating that he persisted in believing the police were looking for him. Like there was a point earlier in the story that he could have discarded that notion, but I guess it provided a reason he didn't approach the "guests" sooner.)
Agreed on both counts. I thought at first he had to be hallucinating. And I also wondered why he persisted in worrying about the police. I mean, is jail so much worse than his present situation? He was almost getting on my nerves at one point with his worrying.
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