Change In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis

Change. It is a microscopic aspect of life that everything on earth experiences at one point during their existence. Change is inevitable; it is everywhere, even when one does not take the time to notice it. To some, change is a normal part of life, and when it occurs, they learn how to adapt to that new change and they continue on with their lives. For others, change can be very drastic. It is something unexpected, something that does not come easy to them. Change can be very overwhelming to them, a new aspect of life that they cannot familiarize to. That change could alter their lives and could be something they could never fully wrap their head around. The second type of change was what gave the plot of Franz Kafka’s novel, The Metamorphosis.

Diction is a key component in writing because it helps define a writer’s style. With Kafka, he decided to use many words that tended to have the same articulation to help bring out different forms of emotion. These sentences included words with similar spelling, making the diction of each word sound similar. “He began to crawl, crawled over everything, walls, furniture and ceiling, and finally in desperation, as the whole room was beginning to spin, fell down onto the middle of the big table,” (Kafka 35). This, in turn, these emotions would draw out the themes that Kafka wanted to display, like alienation for example. It shows how by using words with similar diction and connotation, Kafka could help make each sentence reflect one of Gregor’s many emotions. This helped provide many example of themes, as sometimes, Kafka would have words with a rather angry diction to make it seem Gregor was frustrated, and in turn, feeling alienated. Kafka would sometimes make words have a descriptive form of diction, when Gregor would speak of the changes he would experience going from a human to a bug. “He was already beginning to feel winded, just as in the old days he had not had very reliable lungs. As he now staggered around, hardly keeping his eyes open in order to gather all his strength for the running; in his obtuseness not thinking of any escape other than by running,” (Kafka 37). This choice of diction was very important to Kafka’s work because by using words with similar connotations, he was able to help reader’s feel the emotions that Gregor was feeling. It also helped them understand what theme Kafka was trying to get them to understand. Another rhetorical choice made by Kafka that seemed to help pay off. Not only did his choice of diction help show his themes through emotion, but it also have his work a sense of structure. Nothing was disorganized and the reading was