Abstract

Fantasy emerges from the cracks and crevices of rational reality. Italo Calvino says, “Fantasy is possible when the reader stays at a certain distance without falling into the text.” Fantasy does not form farthest from reality. It comes from the confusion between reality and fiction. In short, fantasy does not exist on the contrary of reality, but on the boundary of reality. Reality and fantasy are also structurally intertwined. We can’t distinguish the reality from fantasy clearly. In fact, in this case, the reader or audience is confused about whether what I see is real or not. Todorov calls this case “hesitation.” Hesitation is a key element of fantasy. Two texts that expressed “hesitation” are Kim Young-ha’s short novel Vampire (1997) and Wes Anderson’s film The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). On the surface, these two texts seem to have nothing to do with narrative structural similarities. And both also arouse readers’ and audiences’ interest by letting confuse reality to fantasy. In Kim Young-ha’s Vampire, we can look at the process of confusion of reality called “narrative infection” when a text is read to the reader. In the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, we can find a strategy to make an unreal story feel like a fact in history. And we can also find a process in which the success stories of alienated characters become reality through ‘solidarity’ in the film. This paper is a study of how fantasy creates “reality”, makes readers feel fantasy, and how it spreads through these two texts.