Classwork: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
1. The author: 1833-1924
http://www.kafka.org/index.php?biography
Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, a kingdom that was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), worked as a traveling sales representative and later established himself as an independent retailer of men's and women's fancy goods and accessories, His father was an ambitious and bullying. His father’s overbearing and authoritarian personality left its mark on much of Kafka’s writing.
Kafka was the eldest of six children. On business days, both parents were absent from the home. His mother helped to manage her husband's business and worked in it as much as 12 hours a day.The children were largely reared by a succession of governesses and servants. Kafka's sisters were sent with their families to the Łódź ghetto and died there or in concentration camps. Ottla is believed to have been sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt and then to the death camp at Auschwitz.
Admitted to the Charles University of Prague, Kafka first studied chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law and worked in the insurance industry. In 1917, Kafka began to suffer from tuberculosis, which would require frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, most notably his sister Ottla. Despite his fear of being perceived as both physically and mentally repulsive, he impressed others with his boyish, neat, and austere good looks, a quiet and cool demeanor, obvious intelligence and dry sense of humor.
It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered from clinical depression and social anxiety throughout his entire life. He also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains. He attempted to counteract all of this by a regimen of naturopathic treatments, such as a vegetarian diet. However, Kafka's tuberculosis worsened; he returned to Prague, then went to a sanatorium near Vienna for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924.
2. The historical connection
Some look to Kafka's biographical and historical context to argue that the story, published in 1912, expresses Kafka's own sense of self-alienation. Not only was he a German speaker living in Czech Prague, and a Jew living in virulently anti-Semitic times, but Kafka also felt enormous pressure to become a successful businessman like his father. Gregor's transformation into a disgusting parasite is often viewed as an expression of Kafka's feelings of isolation and inferiority. The story is also read as a prescient allegory for genocide, in particular the Holocaust. The word used to describe Gregor – Ungeziefer – is a term that the Nazis used to refer to the Jew.. While Kafka died in 1924, many surviving members of his family perished in the Holocaust.
A Marxist would read Gregor's inability to work as a protest against the dehumanizing and self-alienating effects of working in a capitalistic society.
Gregor's conflict with his father and the dream-like quality of the story is seen as a nod to Freud's analysis of dreams and the Oedipal complex
His emphasis on the absurdity of existence, the alienating experience of modern life, and the cruelty and incomprehensibility of authoritarian power reverberated strongly with a reading public that had just survived World War I and was on its way to a second world war.
Part 1
1. Motifs:
2. Point of View
3. Characterization:
Homework: Reaction Piece - one to two pages. (Journal)
Put yourself in Gregor's place. Use evidence from the text to support your position.
What circumstances in Gregor’s life might have caused him to feel dehumanized even
before the
metamorphosis took place? From
Gregor’s point of view, what might be some positive aspects of his
metamorphosis into an
insect?
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