The Metamorphosis by F. Kafka

Franz Kafka belongs to those writers of the twentieth century whose fiction express sorrow over the fracturing of military man community. Though Kafka remains exceptional in that he enjoyed no public recognition during his actiontime, his sympatheticness-fame came to him exactly later on his death. His well-developed, modernist parables often do not have any fixed meaning, yet they reflect the insecurities of an age when trust in old-established beliefs has crumbled. Kafka masterfully combines within one framework the knowable and mysterious, an exact portrayal of the factual world with a dreamlike and magical dissolution of it. By unifying those contrary elements he was able to derive upon some new fusion style in prose fiction. The analysis of one of his works will stick forbidden seeing in what way Kafka attains that profound quality of his expression of the obtain of forgiving loss, estrangement, and guilt an experience increasingly dominant in the modern age.Kafkas best-known news report The Metamorphosis is the demonstrative example of Kafkaesque paradox which consists in clashing the realism of commonplace detail with not just improbable unless absurd gos of events. The inner world of Kafkas character seeps from imaginable to actual, Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis transmews into an insect as the only way to manifest his insect-like relationship to the world, where he lives. It is no dream.The Metamorphosis is peculiar as a narrative in having its climax in the very first sentence As Gregor Samsa awoke one dawning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. (Kafka, 19) The rest of the story f altogethers away from this high point of astonishment in one long expiring sigh. This form of narrative, which contradicts all conventional concepts of presenting the discourse, violates the rules just the same as the peoples faith in particular superannuated beliefs had been violated in the twentieth centu ry. As it is known, the traditional narrative bases on the drama of dnouement, the alleged(prenominal) solution of complications and the coming to a conclusion.For Kafka such form is not acceptable because it is just exactly the absence of dnouement and conclusions that is his subject matter. His story is around death, but death that is without dnouement, death that is merely a spiritually petering out. The first sentence of The Metamorphosis announces Gregor Samsas death and the rest of the story is his slow dying. However, in no case Kafkas protagonist is going to give up meekly. He struggles against the reality of living which, actually turned out to be a death for him in his case, it follows, his life is his death and in that respect is no escape. For a moment, it is true, near the end of his long dying, while listening to his sister play the violin, he feels as if the way were opening before him to the unknown feed he craved (Kafka, 76) but the nourishment remains unknown, he is locked into his path for the last time and he expires.What Gregor awakens to on the morning of his metamorphosis is the legality of his life. His ordinary consciousness has lied to him about himself now he is confronted with the transference from his habitual self-understanding into the nightmargon of truth. That unutterable dream, which he got into, reveals, in fact, reality, which he could not have understood before he is a vermin, a disgusting creature shut out from the human circle. (Kafka, 33) At this point it should be underlined that Kafka prefers to use a metaphor, so that Gregor Samsa is not like a vermin but he is vermin. Anything less than metaphor, such as a simile comparing Gregor to vermin, would diminish the reality of what Kafka is toilsome to represent. Gregor appears in a dream and it is only natural that a dreamer, while dreaming, latch ons his dream for reality. However, his metamorphosis is indeed no dream but a revelation of the truth. And this tru th is composed of an array of facts.First of all he grasps the deteriorative effect of his job upon his soul, the job that materially supports him but cuts him off from the conjecture of real human associationsOh God, he thought, what an exhausting job Ive picked on traveling about day in, day out. Its much more irritating work than doing the actual business in the office, and on top of that theres the trouble of constant traveling, of worrying about train connections, the bad and irregular meals, the human associations that are no sooner struck up than they are ended without ever becoming intimate. The annoy take it all (Kafka, 20)He has been sacrificing himself by working at his meaningless, degrading job so as to deport off an old debt of his parents to his employer. Otherwise Id have given notice long ago, Id have gone to the captain and told him exactly what I think of him. (Kafka, 21) But even now, with the truth of his self-betrayal pinning him on his back to his bed, he is unable to claim himself for himself and decide to quithe must wait another five or six yearsOnce Ive saved enough money to pay back my parents debts to himthat should take another five or six yearsIll do it without fail. Ill cut myself altogether loose then. For the moment, though, Id better get up, since my train goes at five. (Kafka, 21)Another truth revealed through metamorphosis is the situation in the Samsa family on the surface, the official sentiments of the parents and the sister toward Gregor, and of Gregor toward them and toward himself underneath, the evil and disgust, and self-disgust family duty required the suppression of disgust and the put to work of patience, nothing but patience. (Kafka, 65) His metamorphosis is a judgment on himself from the standpoint of his defeated humanity. Philip Rahv has very suggestively analyse the subjective meaning of the insect symbol here by showing that quite frequently brothers and sisters are symbolically represented in dre ams as animals or insects and that, since in this story of family life one of the underlying themes is the displacement of Samsa in the family hierarchy by his sister, it should, on the psychological plane, be looked upon as, on Kafkas part, a construct of wish and guilt thoughts. (Rahv, pp. 61-62)Gregor breaks out of his room the first time hoping that his transformation will turn out to be nonsense the second time, in the course of defending at least his swear of returning to his human past. His third eruption, in Part III, has quite a different aim. The final partitioning of the story discovers a Gregor who tries to dream again, after a long interval, of resuming his old place at the inquiry of the family, but the figures from the past that now appear to himhis boss, the chief clerk, traveling salesmen, a chambermaid (a odoriferous and fleeting memory), and so oncannot help him, they were one and all unapproachable and he was joyful when they vanished. (Kafka, 69) Defeated, he finally gives up all hope of returning to the human community. Now his existence slopes steeply toward death. His room is now the place in which all the households dirty old decay things are thrown, along with Gregor, a dirty old decayed thing and he has just halt eating.At first he had thought he was unable to eat out of chagrin over the advance of his room (72). But then he discovered that he got increasing enjoyment from crawling about the filth and junk. On the last evening of his life, watching from his room the lodgers whom his family have taken in set away a good supper, he comes to a crucial realization Im hungry enough, said Gregor sadly to himself, but not for that kind of food. How these lodgers are stuffing themselves, and here am I dying of starvation(Kafka, 74) In giving up at last all hope of reentering the human circle, Gregor finally understands the truth about his life which is to say he accepts the knowledge of his death, for the truth about his life is h is death-in-life by his banishment from the human community. But having finally accepted the truth, he begins to sense a possibility that exists for him only in his outcast state. He is hungry enough, he realizes, but not for the worlds stuff, not for that kind of food. (Kafka, 74)When Gregor breaks out of his room the third and last time, he is no longer trying to deceive himself about himself and get back to his old life with its illusions about belonging to the human community. What draws him out of his room the last night of his life is his sisters violin playing. Although he had never cared for unison in his human state, now the notes of the violin attract him surprisingly. Indifferent to the others, at last he has the courage to think about himself. The filthy starving underground creature advances onto the spotless floor of the living room where his sister is playing for the three lodgers. Here Kafka makes use of the idea that music expresses the inexpressible, that it poin ts to a hidden expanse of spiritual power and meaning.Creating in The Metamorphosis a character who is real and unreal, replete with meaning and vacant of self, Kafka encourages his readers to fill in the void that exists at the center of the insect-Gregors self. Thus, as a reader, one can come to conclusion that Gregors metamorphosis is a symbol of his alienation from the human state, of his awakening to the full horror of his dull, spiritless existence, and of the desperate self-disgust of his unconscious life.ReferenceKafka, Franz (1952) Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka. Translators Edwin Muir, Willa Muir New York Modern Library, 1952Rahv, Philip. (1939). Franz Kafka the Hero as unaccompanied Man. The Kenyon Review, I (1)