Critics have suggested that the film indirectly references the work of writers Dante Alighieri (through the use of "Divine Comedy" imagery) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (through the presence of Faustian bargains). Confounding bureaucratic structures and irrational characters, like those in the novels of Franz Kafka, appear in the film, but the Coens insist the connection was not intended. "I have not read him since college", admitted Joel in 1991, "when I devoured works like "The Metamorphosis". Others have mentioned "The Castle" and "In the Penal Colony", but I've never read them."