Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is a short story written during the nineteenth century that took place during the Modernist Era. The novella was not meant to be published because Franz Kafka specifically told his close friend that he wants his work to be burned. When Kafka suffered from tuberculosis and passed away, his close friend, Max Brod reviewed his work. He thought Kafka's work was brilliant and decided to published his work. Gregor Samsa’s transformation into a vermin has shown the lost of humanity in which it will show the similarity between the main character and the narrator as well as the impact Gregor Samsa’s loved ones have on him.
Gregor’s alteration shows how he has lost control over his own body and that it affects his family and himself. Gregor is unable to move properly due to his condition. He struggles to get out of his bed. In short, he is becoming dehumanized. The blanket that is on top of Gregor symbolized how he is human. When the cover came off, Gregor is in his bare, bug-life appearance. Gregor did not worry about his current condition. Alternately, he is concerned about his job as a traveler. He absolutely wanted to quit his job, however he had to keep working to pay off his parent's debt for their sake. Gregor’s dehumanization : “His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his girth, flickered helplessly before his eyes... his back was all covered with little white spots that he was unable to diagnose...” (Kafka, 11-12). Gregor’s white spots relates to Kafka’s sickness, tuberculosis. Gregor’s family tries to get him out of his room which failed due to his incapability of speaking properly. He strives to get to work, despite the way that he looks, that is something other than a human....
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...ay away from him as far as possible. She wants to be the center of attention and demands to get rid of Gregor for good. His mother seems to care a little more about Gregor unlike the other members of the family. She begged her husband to not kill Gregor after the throwing of the apples incident.
Works Cited
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Kafka, Franz, and Stanley Appelbaum. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. New York: Dover Publications, 1996. Print.
Smith, Jennifer. "The Metamorphosis." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Vol. 12. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 188-212. Gale Power Search. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
Stephen Spender, “Franz Kafka,” in The New Republic, Vol. LXXXXII, No. 1195, October 27, 1937, pp. 347^8.
Gregor Samsa’s mother, whose name is never revealed, is a physically and constitutionally weak woman. She cares dearly for Gregor which is first shown by her distress as Gregor does not wake up at his usual time. It is evident that Gregor’s mother has the hardest time coping with his transformation. She can not bear to lay eyes upon Gregor. Though she has trouble adjusting, she doesn’t stop loving her only son. As Gregor’s mother and sister begin to move furniture out of his room, his mother stops to contemplate whether this is the right course of action. As Sheldon Goldfarb states in his critical essay, “When his mother and sister start removing his furniture, his mother's second thoughts provoke him to resist: he does not want to give up his human past and the possibility of returning to it” (Goldfarb). On the outside, Gregor’s mother reacts with repulsion at the sight of the bug, but on the inside still cares deeply about her son underneath. Gregor is able to see this and it gives him new hope.
The Metamorphosis is said to be one of Franz Kafka's best works of literature. It shows the difficulties of living in a modern society and the struggle for acceptance of others when in a time of need. In this novel Kafka directly reflects upon many of the negative aspects of his personal life, both mentally and physically. The relationship between Gregor and his father is in many ways similar to Franz and his father Herrman. The Metamorphosis also shows resemblance to some of Kafka's diary entries that depict him imagining his own extinction by dozens of elaborated methods. This paper will look into the text to show how this is a story about the author's personal life portrayed through his dream-like fantasies.
Angus, Douglas. Kafka's Metamorphosis and "The Beauty and the Beast" Tale. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 53, No. 1. Jan., 1954, pp. 69-71. Print.
In Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the book begins by the author describing, “One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug”. It is the body, the form that has transformed and no...
She renounced the idea that Gregor could actually still be there. Despite hesitation from her father Grete demanded his removal, “It has to go… that’s the only answer father” (Kafka 49). This illustrates that he went from a person to a thing in Grete’s eyes. The lack of remorse she displays after his death further solidifies her feelings. Gregor was betrayed by the person he least expected and it was one of the main influences in his
Kafka, Franz."The Metamorphosis." The Longman Anthology of World Literature. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2009. 253-284. Print.Works Cited
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th Compact Ed. New York: Longman, 2013. 268-98. Print.
Stephens, J. “Franz Kafka’s personal life reflected in the Metamorphosis” The Kafka Project. 1999-2002. 13 November 2002. .
Kafka, Franz. “The Metamorphosis.” The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Trans. Michael Hofmann. Toronto: Penguin Books, 2007. 85-146. Print.
New York: Vintage International, 1988. Print. Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Trans.
Updike, John. Kafka and the Metamorphosis. Literature and Its Writers: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 2nd ed. Ed. Ann Charters and Samuel Charters. Boston: Bedford, 2001 545-548.
In The Metamorphosis Kafka illustrates a grotesque story of a working salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking up one day to discover that his body resembles a bug. Through jarring, almost unrealistic narration, Kafka opens up the readers to a view of Gregor’s futile and disappointing life as a human bug. By captivating the reader with this imaginary world Kafka is able to introduce the idea that Gregor’s bug body resembles his human life. From the use of improbable symbolism Kafka provokes the reader to believe that Gregor turning into a bug is realistic and more authentic compared to his unauthentic life as a human.
A “Critical Essay on ‘The Metamorphosis’.” Short Stories for Students. Ed. Jennifer Smith. Vol.
Kafka, Franz. "The Metamorphosis". The Metamorphosis. Trans. Donna Freed and Ed. George Stade. New York: Barnes and Nobles, 2003.
One of Franz Kafka's most well-known and most often criticized works is the short story, "Die Verwandlung," or "The Metamorphosis." "The Metamorphosis" is most unusual in that the first sentence is the climax; the rest of the story is mainly falling action (Greenburg 273). The reader learns that Gregor Samsa, the story's main character, has been turned into an enormous insect. Despite this fact, Gregor continues to act and think like any normal human would, which makes the beginning of the story both tragic and comical at the same time. However, one cannot help but wonder why Gregor has undergone this hideous transformation, and what purpose it could possibly serve in the story. Upon examination, it seems that Gregor's metamorphosis represents both his freedom from maintaining his entire financial stability and his family's freedom from their dependence upon Gregor.