World Literature II

Franz Kafka belongs to those of the twentieth century whose fiction express sorrow over the fracturing of human community . His well-developed , modernist parables often do not have any fixed meaning yet they reflect the insecurities of an age when faith 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 . The analysis of one of his works will allow seeing in what way Kafka attains that profound quality of his expression of

the experience of human loss estrangement , and guilt - an experience increasingly dominant in the modern age . Kafka 's best-known story The Metamorphosis is the illustrative work in which the realism of commonplace detail clashes with not just improbable but absurd turns of events

The inner world of Kafka 's character passes through imaginable world into actual one . Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis transforms into an insect as the only way to manifest his insect-like relationship to the world , where he lives . The Metamorphosis is peculiar as a narrative in having its climax in the very first sentence : As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect (Kafka , 19 ) The rest of the story drifts down from this high point of astonishment as one long revelation of truth This form of narrative , which contradicts all conventional concepts of presenting the discourse , violates the rules just the same as the people 's faith in particular ancient beliefs had been violated in the twentieth century . His story is about death , but death is not dynouement of the story , as it is not the most horrible event in the life of the character . The first sentence of The Metamorphosis announces Gregor Samsa 's death and the rest of the story is his slow dying . For a moment , 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 nourishment he craved (Kafka , 76 but he could not get out of his room-cell and he expires

What Gregor awakens to on the morning of his metamorphosis is the truth of his life . That dreadful 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 Kafka prefers to use a metaphor , so that Gregor Samsa is not like a vermin but he is vermin . This metamorphosis is indeed no dream but a revelation of the truth . In giving up all hope of reentering the human circle , Gregor finally understands the truth about his life and as he accepts this 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 world 's stuff , not for that kind of food...