A Rough Start
Everyone today has struggled with fitting in with society and with different situations in life. An author who struggled with many issues, such as self-acceptance, Franz Kafka wrote stories that people could relate to and were intrigued by. Kafka originally did not plan to publish his manuscripts, however, he was urged to by a friend. Although he was insecure about his writing, he continued to write and was influenced by events in his own life. Franz Kafka wrote many dismal, yet meaningful creations based off of his difficult childhood while working at an insurance company after graduating from college and being in many relationships.
Kafka was born in Prague, Bohemia, in Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is now the Czech Republic
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In 1908, he started a job at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute; he had to complete tasks such as handling claims for injuries and examining equipment at factories for safety precautions (Robertson; Loveday). Luckily, his job had flexible hours, so he had time to write after he got home at around mid-afternoon. Along with his work at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, his father made him take over his brother-in-law’s asbestos plant for several years (Loveday). Eventually, Kafka’s condition escalated to the point where he began alternating between brief returns to work and stays in sanatoria. He filed for early retirement from the insurance company in 1922 (Robertson). While Kafka was still working for the insurance company and writing, he wrote stories between the years of 1912 and 1914 that dealt with complex psychological issues, such as guilt and judgement. During that time period, he had thoughts of suicide (Barry). His short stories and novels express feelings of inadequacy, struggle with power and other common feelings that people experience. Kafka’s novel, The Metamorphosis, dealt with the struggle between inner experiences and unknown forces. Kafka has little intentions of having his work being published, but he was urged to by Max Brod, a friend he met in college. Because of this, he published Meditation, in January 1913, and The Judgment, The Stoker, and a chapter of Amerika later that year (Loveday). Kafka also wrote a letter to his father that was 100 pages long, in which he attempted to justify his personality and passion for writing and to reconcile (Loveday; Barry). However, at the same time, it was an attack on his father’s previous treatment of him. Subsequently, Kafka gave the letter to his mother to give to his father, but she never gave it to
In “A Hunger”, “The Penal Colony”, and Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Kafka succeeded in showing his individuals as obsessed with their profession; however their obsession caused their doom because society asks so much from an individual, only so much can be done. However, regardless of that, these individuals choose their work over themselves, and not even bad health or death can stop them. Because society places immures pressure on Kafka’s work obsessed character, they neglect their well-being and cause their own downfall.
As writers, neither Franz Kafka nor Flannery O’Connor received sincere approval from their parents concerning their art. While this fact in no way hampered their desire or ability to create beautifully haunting work, there is evidence that it left bitter feelings. In his letter to his father, Kafka states: “you struck a better blow when you aimed at my writing, and hit, unknowingly, all that went with it. . . but my writing dealt with you, I lamented there only what I could not lament on your breast.”
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.
as a form of hired help since he had taken the job to pay for his
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. .
Sokel, Walter H. “From Marx to Myth: The Structure and Function Of Self-Alienation In Kafka’s Metamorphosis.” Critical Insights: The Metamorphosis (2011): 215-230. Literary Reference Center. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Franz Kafka, b. Prague, Bohemia (then belonging to Austria), July 3, 1883, d. June 3, 1924, has come to be one of the most influential writers of this century. Virtually unknown during his lifetime, the works of Kafka have since been recognized as symbolizing modern man's anxiety-ridden and grotesque alienation in an unintelligible, hostile, or indifferent world. Kafka came from a middle-class Jewish family and grew up in the shadow of his domineering shopkeeper father, who impressed Kafka as an awesome patriarch. The feeling of impotence, even in his rebellion, was a syndrome that became a pervasive theme in his fiction. Kafka did well in the prestigious German high school in Prague and went on to receive a law degree in 1906. This allowed him to secure a livelihood that gave him time for writing, which he regarded as the essence--both blessing and curse--of his life. He soon found a position in the semipublic Workers' Accident Insurance institution, where he remained a loyal and successful employee until--beginning in 1917-- tuberculosis forced him to take repeated sick leaves and finally, in 1922, to retire. Kafka spent half his time after 1917 in sanatoriums and health resorts, his tuberculosis of the lungs finally spreading to the larynx.
Hunger is a term that is often defined as the physical feeling for the need to eat. However, the Hunger Artist in Kafka's A Hunger Artist places a different, more complex meaning to this word, making the Hunger Artist's name rather ironic. The hunger of the Hunger Artist is not for food. As described at the end of the essay, the Hunger Artist states that he was in fact never hungry, he just never found anything that he liked. So then, what does this man's hunger truly mean? What drives the Hunger Artist to fast for so long, if he is truly not hungry? The Hunger Artist salivates not for the food which he is teased with, nor does he even sneak food when he alone. The Hunger Artist has a hunger for fame, reputation, and honor. This hunger seems to create in the mind of the Artist, a powerfully controlling dream schema. These dreams drive the Artist to unavoidable failure and alienation, which ultimately uncovers the sad truth about the artist. The truth is that the Artist was never an artist; he was a fraudulent outcast who fought to the last moment for fame, which ultimately became a thing of the past.
Neumann, Gerhard. "The Judgement, Letter to His Father, and the Bourgeois Family." Trans. Stanley Corngold. Reading Kafka. Ed. Mark Anderson. New York: Schocken, 1989. 215-28.
No person that leads a normal life is likely to write a metaphorical yet literal story about a man transforming into a bug. That being said, no person that leads a normal life is likely to alter a genre as much as Franz Kafka did. With the unusual combination of declining physical health and a resurgence of spiritual ideas, Franz Kafka, actively yearning for life, allowed his mind to travel to the places that his body could not take him. In his recurring themes of guilt, pain, obscurity, and lucidity, are direct connections to his childhood and daily life. His family dynamic, infatuation with culture and theater, and his personal illnesses all shaped his imagination into the poignant yet energetic thing that made him so well-known. With all of his influences combined, Franz Kafka developed a writing style so distinct that he founded a semi-genre all his own: kafkaism.
We as readers will never know the true reason behind Kafka’s Metamorphosis, but it is a masterpiece. It relates surprisingly well to today’s society, even though it was written between 1912 and 1915. The topic of metamorphosis is really universal, we as humans are constantly changing, growing and evolving. Works Cited Aldiss, Brian W. “Franz Kafka: Overview.” St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. 1st ed. Translated by Stanley Appelbaum. New York: Dover Publications, 1996.
According to Houghton Mifflin & Harcourt, “The Judgment is considered the most autobiographical of Kafka's stories.” Although there are a great many perspectives from which to analyse any piece of literature, perhaps the three most relevant lenses to The Judgment are Freudian, biographical, and historical. Through these lenses, one can observe the vast and multitudinous parallels between The Judgement, Kafka’s life, and many of his other works. The similarities between Das verdict and Franz Kafka’s own life give us insight into his creative process. Kafka’s subconscious unrest with his family, his work, and the world at large was expressed in his writing.
Franz Kafka was a very intelligent writer of his times. Kafka was born in Austro-Czechoslovakia. He was mainly a writer of short stories, and complex diaries, yet he did publish a small number of novels. The works of Kafka have been interpreted as allegorical, autobiographical, psychoanalytical, Marxist, religious, existentialist, expressional, and naturalist. His novels have a wide variety of interpretations. Of his novels, The Trial is one of the more complex in aspects of literature (Bryfonski and Hall 288). The Trial was written with the intention of an autobiography for Kafka. The Trial delves into the mind of the victim, K., and also into many things not comprehended by Kafka himself. He wrote this book in order to better convey his questions that he pondered in his head, in search of an answer that was no where to be found, but perhaps in the workings of his fiction novels.