What do you think are some of the most surreal / absurd / psychedelic scenes in literature?
Alice in Wonderland is a little obvious, so if you have any other suggestions, it would be so appreciated!
The reason for this question is just for a school play me and a friend of mine are helping write. It's supposed to feature two students in a library arguing literature, and on the other side of the stage, the scene will get acted out by different actors. We decided to make the two students argue about the "trippiest" scenes in literature, mostly just for laughs, but I want to make the argument really legitimate between these characters, so I'm wondering if anyone else has some real suggestions for some kinda surreal, absurd, or psychedelic moments. Author and era don't matter.
So, well, thank you in advance if you have any suggestions for this somewhat odd question! :P
Yog-Sothoth2013-03-17T01:51:57Z
Favorite Answer
I've got a few.
There's Kafka's The Metamorphis, and the whole Gregor Samsa turning into a bug deal. Kafka in general is as freaky as you get. Then, in Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil (and I warn you beforehand, this isn't surreal as much as it is just plain disgusting) there's a starving vampire who doesn't want to kill this girl, so he sucks her blood from, ah, her lower regions, if you get my drift. Refers to it as 'dead blood'. In Goethe's Faust Mephistopheles (The Devil) disguises himself as a poodle. Oh, and definitely the bit in Voltaire's Candide where they cut off a woman's buttock in order to feed a starving man. The part in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment where Raskolnikov bows down and kisses the earth is also kind of surreal, but in a more serious way. Just the general pigs-dressing-up-and-acting-as-humans theme in Orwell's Animal Farm is also pretty psychedelic.
In 1964, numerous bands interior the great apple underground music scene began to play what they referred to as psychedelic rock. The term psychedelic grow to be an homage to the hallucinogenic drugs that have been basically in the near previous stepping into the typical public expertise. powerful drugs which includes LSD, mescaline and peyote mushrooms have been being blended with marijuana and alcohol as a potential to disconnect from fact. together as decrease than the effect of those aspects, musicians and artists felt as though they had entered a much better sphere of expertise. Psychedelic rock musicians felt unfastened to interrupt out of the pop music mode and carry out longer products according to unfastened-variety jazz and blues fashions. Lyrics have been now no longer required to make linear experience - they might mirror an altered fact of the drug journey.
I know this might sound weird, but the original Pinocchio novel is written in what is referred to as "dream logic", in which the author's voice is very matter-of-fact but the weirdest, what-the-heII moments are happening. This might not be the answer you are looking for, because the voice of the novel is not MEANT to be crazy, it just is. Very few are familiar with the original freakshow that is the original Pinocchio, so it might not fit in well with what you are doing. But just a thought: when Pinocchio meets the dead blue fairy for the first time in the house in the forest, that is a weird scene.