analysis paper step1-3

The Metamorphosis

Determine element: Gregor’s appearance

Literary review:

 The writing background is that from 1914 to 1918, the First World War, many capitalist countries economic recession, social unrest, the people live in hot water. The darkness of the reality, the pain of life, make people lose faith in capitalism society, on the one hand, to seek a way out, reform, on the one hand and in loneliness, decadent, despair. The end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, some artists think the world is chaos, with a clear mind their writing, criticizing capitalism relationships and criticism by human social system. Before and after the First World War and before and after the Second World War, modernist literature came into being. Modernist literary works reflect the capitalist society of the dark, cold relations between person and person, to the despair of the society. Art emphasizes on using extreme exaggeration that the performance of the quirky, depicting the distortion of human nature, the instinct of a man and unconscious subjective feeling, dig the individual intuition, instinct, unconscious, dream, abnormal psychology and half crazy, crazy behavior, and psychology. Modernism of outstanding literary works explores the human mind, to reveal the inner world provides a new artistic technique.

   Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” is a twentieth-century classic that invites various interpretations, but all commentators agree that it is a story about estrangement and alienation. That thesis, however, does not account for me baffling ending of the story.

“Metamorphosis” is the tale of Gregor, a traveling salesman who finds his work loathsome and meaningless. He awakes one morning and finds he has turned into a “gigantic insect”. His change brings disaster to his family. Their torment is too much for Gregor’s sister to bear, and she says:” we must get rid of it…”(124). Later she continues,” you must try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor… if this were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that human beings can’t live with such a creature…(125)

This point is, however, that the creature is Gregor, and the implication of the denial is that only when the family refuse to recognize the true nature of Gregor (the loathsome aspect of wasted living) can life remain tolerable.

Gregor dies, and a charwoman disposes of the corpse. Now the family is rejuvenated and the husband and wife suddenly notice “their daughter’s increasing vivacity”(132) she has bloomed into a pretty girl with a good figure

Why has this metamorphosis in the daughter taken place? The story sadly implies that only false illusion can become a saving ideal, only under its grip can life blossom.

There is quite evidently a spiritual progress from human-insect mongrel to purebred insect as the story unfolds. If i am correct, there is also an altogether more dramatic physical progress than has hitherto been noted. The human, encrusted with the coleopterous, and gradually absorbed by it.-TOM HARTMAN, Sweet briar collage

Gregor’s transformation completely alters his outward appearance, but it leaves his mind unchanged, creating a discord, or lack of harmony, between his mind and body. When he first gets out of his bed after waking, for instance, he tries to stand upright, even though his body is not suited to being upright. He also thinks of going to work, despite the fact that he can’t by any means do so, and when Grete leaves him the milk at the beginning of Part 2, he is surprised to find he doesn’t like it, even though milk was a favorite drink when he was human. In essence, he continues to think with a human mind, but because his body is no longer human, he is unable at first to reconcile these two parts of him.- by MJINDRA5, July 15, 2012

   

Works Cited

Hill, Stanley. "Kafka's METAMORPHOSIS." Explicator 61.3 (2003): 161-162. Academic Search Premier. Web. 30 May 2015.

Hartman, Tom. "Kafka's THE METAMORPHOSIS." Explicator 43.2 (1985): 32. Academic Search Premier. Web. 30 May 2015.

 Kafka, Franz. "Metamorphosis". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 15 April 2014.