No, no, no. Your syntax gives you away, old sport. I honestly didn't mind is how you begin sentences like the following: I honestly didn't mind... taking out the garbage. I honestly didn't mind... getting wet in the rain. I honestly didn't mind... finding a hair in my salad. I honestly didn't mind... getting a shot at the doctors. etc. I found Metamorphosis tedious. It was like, ok, I get it, symbolism, capitalist soul-sucking squalor is bad, secretly pushing communism but not feeling like you think it's going to be better, suicide, suicide, suicide... can it be over yet? It was terrible. ETA: And I was a goth at the time. I was supposed to like Kafka. It was part of the required accoutrement.
"Oh I'm a bug. That's odd. Let me get ready for work!" I laughed at that. I kept on reading , because I had to for school. We got through like three pages in class and the rest was homework. The next day I sat at lunch trying to work through it. I actually had to turn off my music (I do everything from writing to homework with music. It's just background noise but makes anything bearable) because I couldn't keep to the book. So that didn't make me love the book much.
Well yes, it is depressing and soul-sucking. That was probably the point. If you were unable to give to society, society gives you the middle finger and leaves you to rot on the side of the road. It cares little about who you are, personally; your dreams and hopes. It only cares that you work your ass off and shoot money out as a result. In this case, his entire family basically had him do all the work. When he couldn't do it anymore? They discarded him like he were used trash. Also, on a meta-note, @Lemex suggested at one point in an earlier discussion about this book that Kafka saw himself as a burden on his family (ie, the dude was a depressed lil' bunny.) As you can imagine, he wasn't exactly going to fill his book up with happy sunshine and rainbows, even if the initial 'Woah, dude, I'm, like, totes a bug now' could come straight out of Disney. If this were written in 2014, I could almost imagine Gregor tweeting this complete with a selfie as proof. *ahem* It must also be noted, @Ulramar , that there had been some mistranslations. According to some sources, Kafka never specified exactly what Gregor had turned into, only he had become a vermin. He could've woken up a fly, a rat, or a spider for all we know. Point is, he's no longer able to give to society and to his family, and therefore faces scorn and detest.
I hated this story when I had to read it for school, but it stuck with me. I'd think about it sometimes. One of my friends suggested considering it as a dark comedy, which helped. I lived some more, reflected on my life, and at some point a few years later, I noticed I'd I started to admire it. The real turning point was when I finally noticed how well it works as an allegory about the subjective experience of crippling depression. By the time I reread it, I was already convinced of its brilliance. The importance of The Metamorphosis, for me, is not about Kafka's technical skills as a writer, but rather about how he was able express something difficult in a way that is poignant and succinct. This may not have been his intent, but here is the truly amazing thing: Through a story about a man turning into a bug, Kafka was able to articulate more about the horrible realities of mental illness than pretty much anything I have ever read, fiction or otherwise, including things that are actually explicitly about mental illness. This is the power of fiction; this is why fiction is important. A piece like that is a rare and precious gift. Just my 2 cents, though clearly I feel pretty strongly about them. Like, bold strongly, and shit.
My WIP is about an ordinary person who wakes up one morning to find that she is under a dehumanizing curse for no ostensible reason. It focuses on how this curse affects her life. I recently read The Metamorphosis when I learned that it is also about a character who wakes up one morning to find that he is under a dehumanizing curse for no ostensible reason and that it focuses on how the curse affects his life. I was curious. I figured I could learn from a well-known and critically acclaimed example of the niche genre of my WIP. It did not disappoint. It taught me. It moved me. The thing that still haunts me is that Kafka thought of himself as a vermin to his family as Gregor is to his family. So you could read The Metamorphosis as a symbolically laden critique of capitalism or as a self-portrait of a severely depressed person. I read it as both, but primarily as the latter, not only because the latter is more personal, but also because it connects with me on the level that my WIP can easily be read as a portrait of a severely alienated and lonely character. Gregor Samsa is a vermin; that is how it feels to be depressed and unproductive when living with family. My protagonist cannot be remembered by anyone; that is how it feels to be neglected, unappreciated, unloved, or just unimportant. More evidence to support my philosophy that what a reader gets out of a book is determined more by how the reader reads than by how the book is written.
Oh, by the way, much is lost when you read Kafka in translation. I've been told that Kafka absolutely must be read in the original German. The first sentence itself gives translators trouble!
I've asked this thread to be morphed with an earlier thread on Kafka's Metamorphosis. There was a lot of good stuff in that thread, stuff I'd hate to see fade into obscurity. I think people go into Kafka, expecting someone other than who he really is. To be fair, a lot of people who like Kafka say he is something he isn't. Kafka is funny, he's a farce-writer, and the Metamorphosis is actually pretty Swiftian when you read it in a good translation or in the original German. As is The Trial. Kafka isn't Silent Hill, more Terry Gilliam.
'Metamorphosis' is heavy. I read Kafka in Serbian and the translation was phenomenal, maybe the Slavic languages are better suited to his thought process? I don't know. My favourite of his in any case is 'The Castle'. It's one of those novels that defines a writer (and a person) for life.
One thing that keeps coming back to me is that The Metamorphosis is rather like the beginning and end result of some kind of Ovidian Metamorphosis. There is a Jewish undercurrent in this short story, and one I haven't had the resources or time to look up properly, but I will be soon - I'm hoping the essay I have in mind is on Jstore anyway. For some reason this story is one of a few that is always in the back of my mind. I can't say why, it just is.
I don't think my German is good enough for that D: In Chapter 1 when his boss was in the house he was screaming to them and was sort of communicating, I thought. Maybe not
Gregor becomes more and more bestial the more the story goes on. You can sort of see this in the narration too, because his thought process is reported less and less, until it's mostly reactions to what his family are doing. When people are in isolation they often become creatures of habit. He warns his manager and family at first in what is apparently understandable language, but when his father is throwing apples at him, Gregor seems to be unable to communicate anymore. It might have something to do with whatever has happened to him, or it might have something to do with Gregor's psychology, the text never makes it clear which is more the case. However, the narration isn't exactly to be trusted either, because it's designed to give you the impression he is communicating. This isn't a flaw in the story, there is a serious question there about human psychology in that. Which translation did you read, was it the Corngold? That is the best I've found.
It's been years since I read it, but I thought they were unable to understand his attempts at speech. He was trying to scream words at them, but it came out as weird insect noises.
I can agree with this, though not with what you say after. When I first read Kafka, I thought of him as a dark and depressing writer. And he still is to some extent. But now I've become more sympathetic. After reading his diaries, I see his subject matter as a coping mechanism. It's hard for me to find humor (even dark humor) in his writing after reading entries like this:
Holy hell are they something to read. However, I must admit I do find Kafka funny, in a black and bleak way. There is something funny to Kafka's sometimes over-the-topness, maybe Metamorphosis isn't the best example per-se, but the idea of something like The Trial, being put on trial for a non-existent crime does have a weirdly Swiftian jibe feel to it. I'm not honestly sure I'd say you can find comedy in The Metamorphosis, but whenever I read it I do imagine it as something like a cartoon in some ways. The Samsa household seems to be forever bathed in rain and a bleak winter day until the ending, there is something dream-like in it, or a nightmare.
I do, for the record, think there is something funny in how the family react to Samsa's metamorphosis. Could it be pocking fun at the Jewish stereotype? Probability not, but certainly pointing fun at middle class pretensions of trying to live without really working. It get so bad the father ends up throwing apples at what we can only assume is a giant beetle - it's pretty pathetic. Also, the bit at the beginning when he is trying to reason with the office clark. Gregor approaches him on his hind legs like a human. I thought that was pretty funny. Other than that, yes, Metamorphosis is pretty bleak, but that's the thing with Kafka - the genius is hidden just under the surface.
Question: How did you guys end up first reading The Metamorphosis? I'm curious. I imagine like most, I first read it because I was studying it, but I think I was introduced to it at the best time. I first read it when I was during my last year as an undergraduate, and I had a teacher who was German, taught us a bit of German, in a module about totalitarianism and the Holocaust in literature. We read The Trial, 'Penal Colony', and Metamorphosis together, over two weeks. I loved that module, it was one hell of an experience!
We had very advanced education in grammar school, pretty much as soon as it started (age 14) we had some Sartre, Nietzsche, Kafka, Rousseau etc. as required reading. It all took off from there, by the end, most of us have read a lot of classics, both fiction and philosophy (mine was Languages and Humanities stream, there was also Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Classical languages stream within our grammar system, so depending on which you chose, you got some pretty advanced education in some subjects). ps. I always regretted not doing a combined degree of some kind, so I could do some ridiculously surreal Philosophy modules at university. It's just so soul and mind expanding to do such courses, and a real intellectual treat. Really helps you understand the world better. My then boyfriend who was doing Arts/Science majoring in genetics and molecular biology did a metaphysics course, the whole thing about paradoxes, time travel, logical tables, I wished I could be doing the same, but I didn't have a single brain cell to spare by that point.
It was included in a collection of Kafka's stories I decided to get from the library. I never studied Kafka in school/college. He was mentioned a few times in my classes, but it was only in passing. Even though it sucks that I never formally studied him, I'm just glad I happened to pick up that book that day in the library.
Is the German really that basic? Hmm... I just read it in school for an 'absurdist' unit. I think the test for it is today *sweats nervously*
The focus of the module was on Nazi Germany, with some work done about the Soviet Labor camps, so if we were very interested he took time out of his week to give us an hour teaching us German. It was basically just enough to be able to read a few sentences, since obviously the primary sources for studying Nazi history are in German. The Metamorphosis itself, the language isn't actually terribly difficult, and since German is structured very much like English you could likely read it yourself if you have a German dictionary handy and not have a huge amount of trouble. Good luck! This thread should give you some good stuff for it.
I'm in German 4AP in school. I was just expecting it to be like very difficult German. I'll find that translation then! Thanks. We'll see how well I do...
Emphasis on "terribly", it is still difficult, I guess. I can't honestly say if it is difficult or not, I read it in my language. But I read The Country Doctor yesterday, and that story was, by all means, not easy (vocabulary wise). Thank god for Kindle and its dictionaries. @Ulramar , good luck.
Yeah, it must be said I find languages easier than most seem to, so take me saying it's not terribly difficult with a pinch of salt. I posted, earlier in the thread, the first sentence in German if anyone is interested.
