Special issue: The Metamorphosis on The Kafka Project

(SP:) A For Apple

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:58:57 +0000

by Dominique Mao

An apple may only cost only two dollars Hong Kong, but is it really that cheap? The ordinary apple is actually both common and special. Other than starting with the first alphabet A, and ironing in air, apple represents wisdom and knowledge. Also, it made a grand entrance into human life in Genesis, the first chapter of New Testaments from the Bible. Apples appear in short stories and poetry, because Christianity plays an important role in literature. However, Christianity and literature are two completely different topics, yet they are closely related. Why?

(SP:) An Explanation of The Metamorphosis

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:57:47 +0000

by Marji Ellard

I read Franz Kafka’s story the Metamorphosis, and I decided to write about Gregor, the main character and how he acted when he was a cockroach and the difference between him then and when he was human.

Before Gregor was changed into a cockroach, his family respected him for taking care of the family, but kind of tried to keep their distance. They expected him to go to work, though, and anytime after that was his to do as he pleased. But he never seemed to be doing anything anyway.

(SP:) Franz Kafka’s personal life reflected in the Metamorphosis

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:56:33 +0000

by J. Stephens

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.

(SP:) The Dependence and Freedom of Kafka's 'Metamorphosis'

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:54:31 +0000

by Elizabeth McCarty

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.

(SP:) An Essay On 'The Metamorphosis'

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:50:57 +0000

by Liliana Jimenez

In the metamorphosis by Frank Kafka, there are significants actions and transformations which make the story sad, and strange with a happy ending. Explanations that are dramatic events that intensify the excitement of all these actions. Reality and refection play and important role in this story because the events that happened could be applied and assimilated with modern society.

The story is very sad and realistic, some of the things that are related in Kafka’s story can be found in modern families today. Gregor was a man who sacrifies himself working to pay his father’s debts, instead off on his own where he could prospered. Gregor never was recognized by his family of all the efforts that he did, he was taken for granted and he was expected to support the family but never considering what his needs and wants might be. When Gregor became a bug, that was the moment when they started to see how important Gregor was financially. As a result his mother, father and sister had to work together, in order support themselves. This could be applied in the real world when people do not really recognize anyone’s values or good actions. Sometimes when it is too late is that people start to appreciate, but in Kafka’s story Gregor never was appreciate by anyone.

(SP): The Metamorphosis: A Strange, Strange Book

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:47:51 +0000

By Matthew D – 11/99

The metamorphosis very possibly was written by Kafka as an outlet for his feelings of isolation and helplessness. In it, the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, awakens one morning to find himself spontaneously “transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” The story continues from there in a most realistic fashion: his family rejects him, and he stays cooped up in his room until he dies. Although interpretations of the story differ, my opinion is that Kafka wrote this story as a protestation, whether consciously or unconsciously, of his own inner needs not being met. Franz Kafka suffered from severe mental disorientation. This man suffered severe tragedies as a child: as the first child of Hermann and Julie Kafka, he lived to see two brothers born and die before he was six years old. Although they were eventually replaced by three new sisters, Kafka began his life with tragedies which most people do not experience until they are much older. Kafka lacked parental guidance, as he and his sisters were brought up mostly by governess. He was a Jew, and lived in Czechoslovakia, but he went to German schools. Therefore Kafka masked himself twice, at the bidding of his father. His father had made himself into a successful businessman, and expected Kafka to do the same. Most of Kafka’s stories contain or center around an over-domineering, almost frightening father figure. Kafka obeyed his father. He remembered his high school education as being meaningless and dull, but, out of obedience to his father, he completed it, and passed with flying colors. This switching to a less offending option in order to offend no one characterizes Kafka very well. He possessed a wonderful mind but rarely, if ever, directly expressed himself. Instead, he wrote a story of a man who, trapped in circumstances beyond his control, tries his best to conform to people’s expectations, particularly those of his father, but in the end finds this conformity impossible. Franz Kafka, in his novella The Metamorphosis, explores the concept of total mental isolation.

(SP:) Some thoughts about The Metamorphosis. By B. Herzog

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:46:07 +0000

B. Herzog

What is Kafka’s identification between man and beast; discuss the symbolic and literal meanings of the beast?

i think that the identification kafka makes between man and beast here is simply that some people- and i stress some people- are regarded as nothing more than beasts by other people, but it isn’t really a conscious decision to do so. and it is important to understand that this whole identification depends on this subconscious point of view. it is not that the people really are beasts, or that kafka is saying that they are beasts- i think what he is saying is that, when he looks at society around him, he sees some people treating some others as beasts. and basically, when the term beast is used, the best way to explain what it means is to say “beast of burden.” in the story, gregor’s family and boss saw him no differently than they would view, perhaps, a horse on a farm. he did his work, he worked hard, and he didn’t much communicate with them. this was what they had come to expect from him, and they really had no interest in changing it, as they were caught up in their own pursuits and concerns. but really, i personally don’t think the term “beast” is right for this application. in the story, gregor turned into an insect, and i think this is so many times more resounding to symbolize what gregor had become to his family and boss- and later on to the boarders. i mean, being seen similar to a horse is one thing- people like horses, little kids love horse, people feed the at petting zoos, and let their children ride on them at county fairs. horses are mammals, warm-blooded, soft, and i think that, even though we might think that we are better than them and they should serve us, there is no animosity towards them. with insects, however, it’s completely different. most people i know _hate_ insects, and smash them whenever they see them climbing on a wall or walking on the sidewalk. and people are afraid of insects, too, because they are small, hard, organized, usually don’t make any noise- at least vocally/intelligibly. the noise they do make is usually just a very intimidating buzz- and humans don’t like this. in fact, insects are not at all human, and have no real personalities. horses, on the other hand, and other beasts of burden, do, or at least humans can project a personality onto them. because of this, i think, we can identify more with mammals, feel safe with them, because we can make them sort of like us, or think of them in our own terms. but with insects, this usually isn’t possible. since we can’t get to know insects, or be friendly with them, we are afraid of them and hate them. this is why, i think, kafka chose an insect for the being gregor turns into. it fulfills all the requirements of what significance a beast had above, when you think of a drone or worker bee, or something like that, but it also goes one step further. it removes gregor from the three dimensional human world and puts him into the two dimensional world. after he changed, his family had no idea what to do: how to treat him, relate to him, communicate with him, etc. right after he changed, and got over the initial shock of it, they understood he was gregor, and still saw him as gregor, but that quickly faded. okay, at this time, i think i need to give you my quick synopsis of the story. before the beginning of the story, that is to say, before gregor changed, he was a hard worker. he did his job, kept to himself, and supported his family. this is all his family saw him as. in literary terms, he was a flat character to them. but in reality, he wasn’t. he hated his job. the work was very strenuous on him. and he was a human as anyone, which means that he was constantly changing. not very much, but a little each day, the same way everyone changes a little as the progress through life. however, despite his changes, his family and boss still saw him as they had before- as the faithful and dependable worker. they had him rooted into this image, they were comfortable with it, so they never really looked at him again to keep updated with his changes as a person- they say him for what they wanted him to be, and not for what he really was. then comes the beginning of the story, where gregor “suddenly” completely changes. i say “suddenly” because it was only sudden to everyone but gregor. i mean, to gregor, he was constantly changing, be he could not notice it, no more that you can notice yourself change or grow. but to his family and boss, though, it was sudden. to them, one day, gregor was good old gregor, and the next, he was something completely different. the reasons that this came upon them all at once was because they had ignored him, and not really seen him, up until them. much like when a distant aunt sees you when you’re five, and then doesn’t see you again until you’re ten, and she rants and raves about how big you’ve gotten. to you, you haven’t changes much, because you’ve seen yourself grow all along, and it’s nothing new to you. you compare yourself to the person you were the last time you checked- which might have been yesterday. she, though, compares you to the person you were the last time she checked, which was five years ago. and to her, you have undergone a metamorphosis. so to is the same thing happening in the story. gregor was indeed changing all along, and finally it got to a point that he was no longer at all like the image his family had of him, and they were forced to take notice. what they now say, though, was so foreign to them, and so frightening to them that it was the same as seeing their son turned into an insect. and then, the most pivotal point in the story (to me) comes right after they get over the initial shock of seeing him again for the first time. this point is how they will treat gregor from now on. at first, they treat him somewhat well, but after that it just deteriorates and they fall farther and farther away from him. this can be seen in the slow process of removing things from his room. this symbolizes his progression into a flat, two dimensional character- by taking his furniture and other things from his room, they are making him less and less human. epitomized in the instance where they take his dresser or something (i can’t remember, i haven’t read this story in awhile), the single thing he liked to climb on, away from him. and this can go on and on, their inability to let go for seeing gregor as he really is, and ever convicting him to be what they want him to be. eventually, this inability of theirs, their fear and whatever else, ruins their lives, and gregors. they can’t deal with it, and they take him down, too. oh, but there is one other point i would like to touch on- this is gregor’s speech, meaning, his voice, the way he talks, etc. in the beginning of the story, he can still speak english, and his family can still understand him. however, his ability to speak english quickly goes away, and his family can no longer understand him. basically, it is the understanding part that is most important. to his family, the new gregor was so unfathomable that he wasn’t even speaking english anymore- and other attempts to communicate with them all failed, and i think i recall it was for their lack of openness that they did fail. however, in reality, gregor was still speaking english- at least, he was thinking english. since gregor was unaware of his personal changes, really, he had essentially not changed (i think i also recall in the beginning of the story, gregor trying to plead to them that it was still him, still their beloved gregor. he knew he hadn’t changed.)- so he could still understand himself when he spoke and thought. but his family could not. this whole story was a recounting of their view of the situation, and not of reality. but subjective realities is another topic for another time.

The Metamorphosis. By G.S. Trujillo (Spanish version)

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:44:06 +0000

La Metamorfosis es la historia de un viajante de comercio, Gregor Samsa, que una mañana se despertó convertido en un monstruoso insecto. Y no se trata de un sueño, sino de una metamorfosis real, simple y llanamente, sin ninguna retórica de por medio. Ante este hecho increíble Kafka no hace concesiones realistas, y mantiene la nueva condición de su personaje hasta el final. Esto hace de La Metamorfosis una obra de ficción dura, a la manera de La Odisea (con la que está muy relacionada, además), o los cuentos de hadas del Medioevo, particularmente aquellos en los que una malvada hechicera convierte al Príncipe Azul en un animal repugnante.

The Metamorphosis. By G.S. Trujillo (English version)

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:38:55 +0000

The Metamorphosis is the story of a commercial traveler, Gregor Samsa, that one morning awoke turned into a gigantic insect. It is no dream but, simply and plainly, a real metamorphosis with no rhetoric in between. Facing this incredible fact, Kafka does not do any realistic concessions and keeps the new condition of the character to the end. That makes of The metamorphosis a hard work of fiction, in the way of Odyssey (with which, besides, it is closely related) or in the way of the Medieval fairy tales, specially those in which the wicked witch turns The Prince Charming into a hideous animal. From the other side, the work, that belongs to a trilogy about marriage in relation to the individual, the family and the so-ciety written by Kafka, has a highly autobiographical contain. In The Judgment the subject is the engagement assumed as a treason to the literary calling; in The metamorphosis there is a view of marriage and family relations from a masochistic and incestuous perspective; in The Trial, it is the settlement of accounts, related with the incapacity of accomplishing the acquired compro-mises, according to an unwritten law, he must pay. In the three cases, the story ends with the protagonist’s death. The Metamorphosis is built on a fiction level with two faces, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky and Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, superposed in a way they get in contact with a real level with two faces too, the family relations and his dreams of Felice. By the merging of theses two levels, Kafka gets a fantastic reality which allows him to express his deepest dreams and desires in relation with marriage and sex in a poetic language that turns The Metamorphosis into a classic of erotism, aspect not considered until now. (Such a pleiad, Kafka, Sacher- Masoch and Dostoesky, met in The Metamorphosis turns into a height of masochism this work). PART ONE The Metamorphosis has three parts: the first one describes both the transformation of Gregory and his family’s reaction to this respect; the second part shows the new cotidianity of the fami-liar group whose fragile estability crush with Gregory and sis-ter’s bringing face to face; and the last part, where we attend Gregory’s frustrated attemp of reconquering his sister, ends with his death. The foreground onto which Kafka builds his work is Dostoevsky’s novel. This one brings to him a textual base that he lightly, mainly through substitutions, varies for adapting it to the intentions of his own story. For the first part of The Meta-morphosis, Kafka takes three awakenings of Raskolnikov -as an animal, as a murderer and as a guilty man-. With them he assembles the first scenes of the narrative. Taken into account the scenes Kafka selects from Crime and Punishment, the traditio-nal version of an angelical Gregory, victim of both family and society, results a suspicious one. The Metamorphosis begins with the awakening of Gregory as an insect. In a first paragraph that makes part of the unforgetable beginnings of literature, Kafka describes it: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.” This extraordinary beginning is a variant of the beginning of the third chapter of the first part of Crime and Punishment, where Dostoevsky describes the state of abandonment and loneliness at which Raskolnikov, whom he portraits as a withdrawed-into-his-shell animal, is: “He waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had not refreshed; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls…” “…He (Raskolnikov) had got completely away from everyone, like a tortoise in its shell…”. The Metamorphosis insect is born when Kafka, using one of his most powerful tools: literalness, turns the “vermin”, the “bug”, the “creep”, the “aesthetic louse” Raskolnikov is into a “real insect”. Through literalness, Kafka dismantles the metaphore that supports the “moral insect” leaving just the “insect” without qualifiers. In the world of literature, never before had metapho-re been explored to such limits. Diving to words essence, Kafka makes of his style a style hard like a rock and transparent like fresh water. There is a theory at the origin of the carved Raskolnikov’s tragedy according to which people are divided in “ordinary” and “extraordinary people”, with the last one allowed to transgress law when it interposes on the road of a glorious destiny. The case of Napoleon particularly seduced Raskolnikov, who wanted to test his theory through a moral esperiment and, by this way, decide whether Raskolnikov himself was a Napoleon or a “trembling animal”. However, Raskolnikov was not a Napoleon but a “aesthetic louse”: “A Napoleon would not get in under an old pawnbroker’s bed!”. Kafka takes his character from Raskolnikov’s wombs but he does not make of him his equal for, if Raskolnikov dreams of being apoleon, Gregory, according to the portrait hung on one of the Samsa’s family dinning room walls, is Napoleon: “Right opposite Gregor on the wall hung a photograph of himself in military service, as a lieutenant, hand on sword, a carefree smile on his face, inviting one to respect his uniform and military bearing”. In one of his diary notes dated october 17th, 1911, Kafka mentions this image that likes him very much: “When I think of this anecdote: In the Court of Erfurt at the royal table Napoleon refers a story: When I was a simple lieutenant at the fifth regiment…(the royal highnesses turbed look each other; noticing this Napoleon corrects himself), When I had the honor of being a simple lieutenant…” my neck arteries swell with a pride that, lightly in agreement with the protagonist, artificially emotions me". Kafka continues the first scene bringing in the murder’s after-noon when, about six thirty, Raskolnikov awakes without having done any preparations for the crime. His has to stay in the old woman’s house at seven, time at which she’ll be alone. Raskolni-kov thinks he is living a nightmare and cannot imagine himself yet taking an ax, and cracking the skull of the old woman. In his turn, Gregory reflects on what is happening to him and wonders whether everything is just a nightmare, whether he must forget all his fantasies and hurry up and take the train that leaves at seven. No matter the clock hands continue running, Raskolnikov does not get to decide to leave his bed. Both Gregory and Raskolnikov are short of time and their final reaction is the same: “Gregor’s eyes turned next to the window… (then) “He looked at the alarm clock ticking on the chest”. -(Raskolnikov) “Suddenly he heard a clock strike. He started, roused himself, raised his head, looked out of the window, and seeing how late it was, suddenly jumped up…” Gregory: “Heavenly Father! He thought. It was half-past six o’clock and the hands were quietly moving on…” -(Raskolnikov) “and meanwhile perhaps it had struck six.”(…) “It struck six long ago” “Long ago! My Good!”. “His (Gregory’s) samples weren’t even packed up” and for Raskol-nikov: “It seemed to him strange and monstrous that he could (…) had done nothing, had preparing nothing yet…” Finally: “Seven o’clock already”, he said to himself when the alarm clock chimed again, “seven o’clock already and still such a thick fog.” (Raskolnikov): “Suddenly a clock somewhere struck once. ‘What! can it be half-past seven? Impossible, it must be fast!” Kafka recreates a third awakening, the one that starts Crime and Punishment second part where Raskolnikov is now a murderer. He, as soon as commits the crime, comes back to his room where pass a night between delirium and nightmare. Next morning violent knocking at his door wake him up. Not knowing which way to turn, he is seized with terror for he thinks somebody has came for him because of his crime. It is the porter and the maid who have came for bringing him a notice from the police (office). The maid (Nastasya) ask Raskolnikov about his health and the reasons for passing the bolt inside as if now he were afraid of being robbed: “Then who can have latched the door?” retorted Nastasya. “He’s taking to bolting himself in! As if he where worth stealing! Open, you stupid, wake up!” In The Metamorphosis it is the family that appears in the scene. They, as soon as notice Gregory still remains in his room, knock the door and say the time to him. Then, they ask him if he is ill that he does not open the door. By any means, however, Gregory does not think to open and he congratulates himself for being in the habit, acquired in his business trips, of locking in his room even at home. The type and sequence of the scenes choised by Kafka for assam-bling the text of the first part are coherent with the base story and undoubtly Gregory, like Raskolnikov, is guilty. Guilty of what? Whast was his crime? The answer to these questions is in the second paragraph and in front of Gregory’s bed. He (Gregory) as soon as notice his transformation, look as Samson could look at Delilam before losing his eyesight: “What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and spread out -Samsa was a commercial traveler- hung the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had vanished!” Gregory is not a murderer in the way of Raskolnikov but an ultra-sentimental who is mad about a very well known woman, Venus in Furs, whose original portrait was in St. Petersburg, home of Raskolnikov, the St. Petersburg’s friend. Gregor Samsa shares his desire object with his double, Sacher-Masoch, with whom he him-self identifies till the point of assuming, secretly and trough a permutation, Sacher-Masoch’s identity: Gregor Samsa is an anagra-me of this name. Moreover, Severino Kusinski, the protagonist of Venus in Furs, as slave and by command of his owner, the Furs’ Lady, takes the name “Gregory” instead of his name. With this, the identification proves to be multiple. As Brod said, without imagine until what point, those impure women affairs beared upon Kafka’s very much. Since The Metamorphosis, Kafka uses a technique consisting of hanging on the walls portraits of important characters of the work that act behind the scenes, changing the course of the original narrative which serves as a textual support. The second fictional ground, Venus in Furs, give us the identities of the protagonists through two things, a portrait and a name. Much was argued over Kafka’s work and over the presence or absence of keys in it. Those who thought of an affirmative answer to this matter where in a losing position for these keys were never found. Then the work of Kafka gave rise to endless interpretations. Gregor Samsa -Sacher-Masoch- is Franz Kafka. Consequently, the portrait lady -Wanda Dunaiev- is Felice Bauer, his brilliant girlfriend who inspires the story to him. In a letter of november 1st, 1912, to Felice, Kafka points out the close relation that exists between Felice and his work, and refers to The Metamorpho-sis’ genesis when he confess to her that since the afternoon when he wrote to her for the first time, “I have had a feeling as if in my chest there were a gap through which a sucking and uncon-trolled power pull in and out muy wombs till one night in bed when, remembering a biblical story, both the need of that feeling and the veracity of the story at once were evident to me”. Kafka does not say to Felice anything about what story is he talking but, undoubtly, it is the story that acts as epigrame in Sacher-Masoch’s novel: “The Lord Almighty punished him, into a woman’s hand he put him” (judith 16, chapter VII). Kafka must have to see with horrible precision that “since Holofernes and Agamenon until now, voluptuosity, the blind passion, has always drove man to the breast woman offers to him… Misery, slavery, death”. In Severino-Gregory’s diary we read: “I had breakfast under the green vault and began to read the book of Judith, envying the rage of Holofernes, The Gentile, the real woman that beheaded him and even his beautiful death.” “The Lord Almighty punished him, into a woman’s hand he put him.” This phrase annoys me. How little courteous the Jewish! Their God could choice a better expression for the gentle sex. “The Lord Almighty punished him, into a woman’s hand he put him, “Meanwhile I repeated to me. What could I do to be punished?” Venus in Furs is inspired in the baroness Fanny von Pistor, a woman of “strange, diabolical beauty, o redish hair which splendor defied any description, with something magic and fascinating like a snake’s gaze” whom Leopold von Sacher-Masoch idealizes in Wanda Dunaiev, the protagonist of the novel. Sacher-Masoch, who repeatedly dreamt of a beautiful sultana enslaving him in a tur-kish palace, molds in this work his femenin ideal: an opulent woman, in furs, and with a whip at a hand that inflicts any sort of punishments and humilliations everything in accordance with a contract previously signed between Severino Kusinski and Wanda Dunaiev, in which clauses he accepts to be her slave and to allow her to do with him anything she wants. A serious one question to Sacher-Masoch as shows the fact of making real his fantasy of formalizing a contract (with Aurore Rümelin who, adopting the name of Wanda, the protagonist of the novel, enchanted, accepted to enslave the writer with whom she got married later. Thus, Sacher-Masoch became converted in the fictional character he himself had imagined and reated. For Kafka, things develop in a different way. He starts from a fantasy - Venus in Furs- inspired by a real relationship -with Felice Bauer- to which he gets satisfaction through a fiction in The Metamorphosis. For Him, literature functions like a mechanism that gives him, and also satisfies, his fantasies. In the case of The Metamorphosis, literature allows him to live a marriage in a literary virtuality that acts as a substitution of the real, so exorcised, marriage. For that reason, the ideal that inspires the work and the ideal that embodies it are, in Venus in Furs, two women acting as poles between which literature -fiction- circula-tes, and, in The Metamorphosis, a same and only woman -Felice Bauer- circulating between the two poles of fiction. On the other hand, this woman that serves as a “driver” for Kafka’s fantasy does not need to be a beautiful baroness since actually Kafka, while seeing Felice for the first time mistook her for a maid at whom, from the beginning and owing to the infernal bright of her gold teeth, he was unable to look face to face. Gregory, while surrendering himself to the furs lady who have enslave him, has turn into a insect and does not know yet whether that condition is a permanent or a temporary one. His bedroom door separates both the world of fantasy and the world of rea-lity, where his family and job are and demand him. Gregory does not feel like facing reality til the moment the chief clerk comes and hints that Gregory wants to steal from the store. The, Gre-gory gets to leave his bed and, walking at the door, opens it with difficulty. The chief clerk yells and backs away when Gre-gory goes out off the room, the mother faints and the father burst out crying. Gregory tries to calm the clerk who thinks to lay him off, but the man goes hastily. This upsets Gregory’s father who drives Gregory back into his room stamping his feet loudly while flourishing a walking stick in his right hand and a large newspaper in the left. In this dramatic scene, one of the best achieved of the story, and inspired in the meeting of Raskolnikov with his mother and sister, in his little room of St. Petersburg, that ends the first part, Kafka gives us an idea of his familiar and labor rela-tionships, both extremely bad indeed for the days of narration. The father appears brute and tyrannic. The mother is shown like a weak human being with no character. In regard to the sister, perhaps to show politeness with all his sisters (unlike with his father with whom he mutually and decisively hates, as Kafka writes to Felice a week before beginning the narrative, he says to get on well together with all of them) Kafka sends her for the doctor, putting her farther away of the scene. Forever condemning himself to animality, Gregory will not be a free man nevermore. This is a voluntary, unknown for his family, transformation. Among them and as far as the know something like this had occurred never before. Nor among their neighbors such a thing had happened. Therefore, Gregory’s metamorphosis is consi-dered as a real damnation. Hindering them of having their usual life, Gregory tortures his family till infrahuman limits and seizes the words of the “Notes from the Underground” embittered mouse, one of his direct ancestors: “I know I torture you, I cause you suffering, I do not allow anybody at home to sleep. Well, don’t sleep, realize each time my teeth ache. For you, now, I am not a heroe as I tried to look before; I am a despicable being, an idler. Nothing cares me! I feel happy of you knowing me as I am. Does listening to my vile wails disgust you very much? Well, disgust you. Now you will see what a warbling I have prepared for you!” At the beginning, Kafka conceived The Metamorphosis as a short story, (just the first part). Therefore it would be a little jewel of black humor with intimate erotic resonances, hardly perceived indeed, and assimilated with a simple dream by the confused reder if the initial plan of the work would have been mantained. But once Kafka ends the first part, he feels an “unlimited desire of melting himself in the story, a “wild desire” of prolonging it. And in November 23rd he writes to Felice that the “short story” “silently begins to become a longer one”. The story entitled “The Metamorphosis” is “a little bit dreadful”. Next day, he reads the first part to his friends and they, according to Max Brod’s testimony, supose it is the reading of a whole work. (Later, when Musil, in order to publish The Metamorphosis in Die Neue Rundschau German Magazine, asks Kafka to cut out a third part of the work, Kafka answers suggesting to publish only the first part, and in this way, the story is reduced in two-third parts. Musil is disconcerted with the proposal but not as much as Kafka is). On November 24th, a Sunday, when the mentioned reading of Kafka to his friends take place, he introduces the story to Felice with the next terms: My Love, how extremely repulsive is the story I have just put to one side to try to recover myself thinking of you. I have advanced a bit and a half and, in his entirity, I am not unhappy with it. But nauseating as it is in an unlimited manner, and things like these, you see, come from the same heart you live in, and tolerate as home. Don’t be sad for that since, who knows, perhaps as much as I write and free myself, purer and worthier of you I will become. However there are many things in me it is necessary even to take out, and nights could not be long enough for a task, in the highest degree, besides, so voluptuous.”

«Macht er sich einen Narren aus uns?» by Friedgard Thoma

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:37:47 +0000

» Unmoralischer Versuch über Franz Kafkas Erzählung «Die Verwandlung»

„Es gibt wenig sicheres, aber das gehört dazu, daß wir niemals zusammenleben werden, in gemeinsamer Wohnung, Körper an Körper, bei gemeinsamem Tisch, niemals […] Fast hätte ich jetzt gesagt, es scheine mir das so gewiß, wie die Gewißheit, daß ich morgen früh nicht aufstehn (ich allein soll mich heben! Ich sehe mich dann unter mir wie unter einem schweren Kreuz, bäuchlings niedergedrückt, schwer habe ich zu arbeiten, ehe ich mich wenigstens ducken kann und der Leichnam über mir sich ein wenig hebt) und nicht ins Bureau gehen werde.[…] Doch nimm das über das Aufstehn nicht zu wörtlich, so schlimm ist es nicht; daß ich morgen aufstehn werde, ist immerhin gewisser als die fernste Möglichkeit unseres Zusammenlebens.“ Kafka an Milena, Prag im September 1920

El kafkiano caso de la Verwandlung que Borges jamás tradujo. By Fernando Sorrentino

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:35:16 +0000

Compré el libro —pequeño formato, tapas desvaídamente anaranjadas— en abril de 1962. La portada dice textualmente: Franz Kafka / La / metamorfosis / Traducción y Prólogo de / Jorge Luis Borges / (Cuarta edición) / Editorial Losada, S. A. / Buenos Aires. Es el nº 118 de la muy popular y agradable Biblioteca Contemporánea; esta cuarta edición data del 29 de enero de 1962 y reproduce1 el texto aparecido por primera vez (15 de agosto de 1938) en la colección La Pajarita de Papel, que dirigía Guillermo de Torre.

Kafka: Die Verwandlung (1912)

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:22:20 +0000

Arbeitsfragen:

Welche Haltung nimmt Gregor Samsa gegenüber seiner Verwandlung ein (von Anfang bis Ende!)
Die Reaktion der Umwelt auf seine Verwandlung
Welche “Verwandlungen” vollziehen sich im Verhältnis der Familienmitglieder zueinander?
Welche biographischen Bedingungen Kafkas lassen Parallelen zur vorliegenden Erzählung erkennen? (Beilage)
Mit welchen sprachlichen Mitteln verstärkt Kafka die Irritation des Lesers? (Einstieg durch Vorlage der eigenen Randnotizen erleichtern)

Zu 3) Zunächst unauffällige, “normale” Familie: Sohn Gregor als Familienerhalter, umgeben von Vater, Mutter, Schwester (beachte S.21/22). Sein Liegenbleiben (= nicht die Norm) sorgt sofort für Beunruhigung, am deutlichsten bei der Schwester (“klagte leise”, “..mach auf, ich beschwöre dich”).

Lecture on "The Metamorphosis" by Vladimir Nabokov

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:32:07 +0000

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. “To take upon us the mystery of things”—what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol’s “The Greatcoat,” or more correctly “The Carrick”); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis)—so what? There is no rational answer to “so what.” We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.

Gregor Samsa as Functional Deviant. A Hypothetical Interpretation by Friedrich Nietzsche

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:30:23 +0000

by Russell McNeil

My dear friends:

Suppose all that you have always valued in your lives was shown to you to be: illusion. What would it be like to turn truth on her head? To have your precious beliefs, maxims, platitudes, and traditions inverted and distorted beyond recognition? To suddenly realize that what is good, is bad; what is beauty, is foul; what is virtue, vice?

Essay Topics for Kafka's Metamorphosis

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:20:58 +0000

A first help to give a frame to your paper

Comment on the significance of the title “The Metamorphosis.”
Construct an interpretation of The Metamorphosis based on your account of why Gregor Samsa “found himself in his bed transformed into a monstrous vermin.”
What role do the boarders play in The Metamorphosis?
Compare the metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa with the awakening of Edna Pontellier.
Can Freud’s notions of Eros and the death instinct illuminate Gregor’s plight?

Special issue: The Metamorphosis.

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:18:49 +0000

English Translations, Essays, Student Papers (SP)