Franz Kafka (1883–1924)

• Jewish heritage• Prague• father–son

relationship• Freud, oedipal• insurance company

Prague

Franz Joseph I

Judaism

• nightmarish

• grotesque

• problems with authority figures

• Kafka’s letter to his father

• “I meant absolutely nothing as far as he was concerned.”

Kafkaesque

Literary Expressionism

Bug and Grotesque

“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach in his bed” (p. 210).

“‘Oh my Lord!’ He thought. ‘If only I didn’t have to follow such an exhausting profession! On the road, day in, day out. The work is so much more strenuous than it would be in head office, and then there’s the additional ordeal of traveling, worries about train connections, the irregular, bad meals, new people all the time, no continuity, no affection. Devil take it!’” (p. 211).

“Unaccidental Accident”

“And it felt like a confirmation of their new dreams and their fond intentions when, as they reached their destination, their daughter was the first to get up, and stretched her nubile young body” (p. 241).

Codependency

The word “metamorphosis” connotes a process or at least the moment of change, but Kafka’s story does not portray that moment. Gregor simply wakes up as the bug. How would the story change if Kafka had shown the audience the process of transformation? Why didn’t he show the metamorphosis?

Discussion Questions

Kafka’s lived in Prague; pay particular attention to the city’s anti-Semitism and Kafka’s relationship to his Judaism. How might this aspect of his biography have influenced The Metamorphosis?

Discussion Questions