The Metamorphosis By Kafka
In The Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka cruelty is what stemmed Gregor’s change into a large bug and subconsciously motivated him to end his life. Gregor’s new form was a depiction of how he already felt in his household, trapped, voiceless, and small. As Gregor’s metamorphosis developed so did the characters cruelty which affected both the perpetrators and the victims. The Samasa family’s cruelty was demonstrated both physically and mentally by Gregor’s father driving him back into his room, throwing apples at him and by Grete’s use of the word “it”.
In the story, “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, the style of the novel is depressing, and hopeless, these styles enhances the nightmarish quality by using dark vocabulary, for example, “Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather... Gregor said to himself, caught in some nonsensical hope… every one of them, louts, was there not one of them who was faithful and devoted who would go so mad with pangs…”. This choice of words put together give off the sensation of deep sadness and hopelessness. The “dull weather” indicates a dreary and gloomy mood at the beginning, setting the mood. To give the scene a more nightmarish look, Gregor says, "How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense".
One example of this is, “the maid fainted” (69). The fact that the maid fainted shows that something grim or gruesome made her do so. Some other uses of details include this, “The rosy man had grown pale” (81). This conveys a grim mood because the authors shows that something was done to make the man grow pale who as described by Stevenson as “rosy”. Another detail that shows a grim mood is, “I knew well that I risked death” (113).
The Repercussions of Cruelty Cruel actions lead to cruel endings. Gregor Samsa, the protagonist in Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, is turned into a bug from the mental and emotional abuse by the hands of his own family. The cruelty in the Samsa household is apparent from the beginning of the storyline. Their neglect and lack of compassion for Gregor's condition immediately sets the dark and miserable mood of the novella. Gregor’s whole existence has been about caring for his family and making sacrifices for their well being.
These typical features of Gothic Horror have been used in my text to create the mood and setting. To help do this, I have used adjectives, adverbs and personification. See paragraph four and eight in the text to see examples. To further create the scene of suspense, I experimented with different sentence types. Throughout the text, I used a variety of complex sentences to add details and I used short sentences for suspense.
The narrator of the story has many ways of creating fear. One way is his voice. The narrator sounds very insane when he speaks. He speaks every word that comes to mind and in some cases when he came across a word he likes he repeated it. The narrator uses repetition in his voice to emphasis often-sinister phrases such as, “(The vulture eye) was open-wide, wide open” (Poe, 304).
Franz Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis, becoming a beetle gives Gregor insight on his family. Raymond Carver’s short story The Cathedral, shows Bub, a once judgmental man, the insight on blindness. Before their changes, they were blinded by what was in front of them. Life changes cause Gergor’s and Bub’s perspective to differ from what they once were.
What is deconstruction in literature? According to Merriam Webster, a deconstructionist literary criticism is a “philosophical or critical method which asserts that meanings, metaphysical constructs, and hierarchical are always rendered unstable by their dependence on ultimately arbitrary signifiers” (Merriam). In other words, a deconstructionist literary criticism looks at the book as a whole and deconstructs the pieces of the novel and how they may seem unstable when compared to the whole meaning. This mindset is exhibited in that of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Franz Kafka leaves many aspects of the novel unexplained and he includes details that are unstable to the meaning of the novel as a whole.
This is evident in his description of the room with the extensive sentence “steps to the cellar, the light switch, the hand inside the cabinet.” The use of the nouns such as “cellar,” “light switch” and “cabinet” all portray aspects of a familiar setting, building tension as it allows the reader to easily imagine the atmosphere surrounding the story. Furthermore, this long syntactical structure used to describe the room juxtaposes with the short sentences in the story, evidently visible in the short sentence “so I’ve killed him” later on in the story, this sudden change from a long, descriptive sentence to a short, unexpected one builds suspense in the story as the reader is not expecting this quick death of Patrick. Also, this coupled with the evident description of the room allows the reader to visualise the individual details of his death, creating suspense as the clear scene of this murder invokes a sense of morbid curiosity in the reader. Additionally, the text “violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning” prominently employs a familiar setting to create suspense.
Modern societies have been built on patriarchy, giving men more power, rule and opportunities than women. Men have been put in positions of higher power and been given more privilege for quite some time, which later led to a large disparity between the roles of women and men in society. The industrial revolution caused the inequality between women and men to blossom. This period of time revolutionized the economy and the infrastructure of the world, giving men even more power and chances to advance in society while leaving women behind the times. Key pieces of literature and motion pictures from the modernity era capture and hold the way of life during these times, displaying the dissimilarity in how women were treated and dealt with.
In the … black chamber, the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings… was ghastly… and produced so wild a look upon… those who entered.” Descriptions using words that are normally associated with mystery and horror add to the reader’s understanding of a scene; and Poe so well exercises the power of words as he uses the description of setting to appeal to the infamous mood of his
A literary work may be eerie to an extent of almost seducing the thought of darkness. “The Fall of the House of Usher”, by Edgar Allan Poe, consists of woeful diction, narrator point of view, and gothic symbolism, which all convey a gloomy mood. With the use of woeful diction, a feeling of darkness is transmitted. Throughout the short story, Poe utilizes terms such as “dull” and “dark” which instantly give the sense of both.
There has always been something that a person does with the intent of causing an impact in the world, but in reality it has no existential meaning. This happens to many people everyday and they question it. They question everything about their life just to get an answer. Another thing that many people, like Albert Camus, ask is if there really is meaning to life in the world. In the novel, The Stranger by Albert Camus, a young man named Meursault does everything without a care in the world and gets in trouble by the law, while the short story “Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka, is about a man who has turned into a cockroach and has to live as an insect until his death at the end of the story.
Franz Kafka is a German novelist who wrote “The Metamorphosis.” In the story, he uses a third person point of view narrative. The novel uses absurdum, which exaggerates and dramatize the absurdity of modern life. The protagonist, Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, struggles with an external factor of transforming into an insect like creature. The transformation was not under his control and now struggles with a new identity.
The Metamorphosis by the Austro-Hungarian author Franz Kafka, originally named Die Verwandlung (1915). This story shows the life of Gregor Samsa who was a salesman that traveled almost everyday and was the only one to maintain the family with his job, who all of a sudden became a human-sized bug; however, Kafka doesn’t state why he becomes a bug in the first instance. It is believed that Kafka reflects his life on the work of literature because he usually shows how men have their self-worth taken away by a greater force which in this case was his transformation. Gregor Samsa as stated before, becomes a giant bug, and no one knows why this happened. To understand, you first need to know about Kafka’s life which was highlighted by tragedies;
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