Kevin Brockmeier's "The ceiling"the real and claustrophobic fantasy of a broken couple

Resumen

This paper examines "The Ceiling" in an attempt to determine Brockmeier's literary strategies and narrative mechanisms involved in this story. The pressure and claustrophobia produced by the ceiling are apparently the thematic subject of the story but in fact the writer describes with an impressive metaphor, the disappointments and frustrations that define the obscure and monotonous life of an ordinary couple in a traditional comunity in the United States. The effects of this nightmare are reflected on the black polished undersurface of a strange ceiling, which is falling to the ground and destroying everything around. From the opening to the close this circular story brings to light the evolution of real anguish through the unreal mind of a childish man, who is unable to see what is really happening to his dissapointed wife. The story shows great originality in the way in which the process of the crisis is described, because Brockmeier builds an allegorical fantasy very close to magical realism but intertextuality, metafiction, symbolic code and archetypical structure are also involved in the story.