The Metamorphosis
Many people go through drastic changes in their lives trying to get away from their past when they have haunting memories caused from a tragedy or a past relationship. We go to great lengths to attempt to change or forget what has happened before, but it always seems to fail because our minds cannot simply forget these events that rip and tear at us from the inside. In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Kafka explores the absurdity of life through Gregor's transformation as he struggles with himself and the outside world around him.
In this story Kafka writes about a dream that he had years earlier. He tells the story just as the dream occurs and shows how one's troubles can push them so far these influences will affect the people who love them the most.
Kafka first begins his absurd writings with aspects of dreams or nightmares that cause him great hurt, but makes them think about and learn from the dreams' hidden meanings.
Kafka's stories have often been compared to dreams or nightmares, but the analogy has seldom been elaborated. We may here take the opportunity of inspecting the actual mechanics of the dream-logic' the pseudo-logic, the subrational thought with which not only The Metamorphosis but Kafka's whole work is saturated (Flores 111).
Dreams and nightmares represent absurdity or the unrealistic aspects and desires of the human mind. Kafka shows how people's lives can be based on something completely unreal and not focused on any of the actual important opportunities that people allow to pass right by them.
Waking and finding himself supernaturally, unmistakably, and disgustingly transformed, Gregor shows concern only with the weather, his job, the train he missed, and the best method of getting out of bed: in other words, he automatically displaces his attention on to inessentials, on to peripheral details of his situation, distributing and reducing his manifest emotion accordingly (Flores 111).
Kafka displays the way the human mind avoids
In this story Kafka writes about a dream that he had years earlier. He tells the story just as the dream occurs and shows how one's troubles can push them so far these influences will affect the people who love them the most.
Kafka first begins his absurd writings with aspects of dreams or nightmares that cause him great hurt, but makes them think about and learn from the dreams' hidden meanings.
Kafka's stories have often been compared to dreams or nightmares, but the analogy has seldom been elaborated. We may here take the opportunity of inspecting the actual mechanics of the dream-logic' the pseudo-logic, the subrational thought with which not only The Metamorphosis but Kafka's whole work is saturated (Flores 111).
Dreams and nightmares represent absurdity or the unrealistic aspects and desires of the human mind. Kafka shows how people's lives can be based on something completely unreal and not focused on any of the actual important opportunities that people allow to pass right by them.
Waking and finding himself supernaturally, unmistakably, and disgustingly transformed, Gregor shows concern only with the weather, his job, the train he missed, and the best method of getting out of bed: in other words, he automatically displaces his attention on to inessentials, on to peripheral details of his situation, distributing and reducing his manifest emotion accordingly (Flores 111).
Kafka displays the way the human mind avoids
Cited: Danta, Chris. "Two Versions of Death: the Transformation of the Literary Corpse in Kafka and Stevenson." Textual Practice June (2006): 284-285. Academic Search Complete. 17 Oct. 2007. Flores, Angel. Explain to Me Some Stories of Kafka. New York: Gordian P, 1983. 104-111. Gross, Ruth V. Critical Essays of Franz Kafka. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1990. 81-82. Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis and other stories. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1996. Pfeiffer, Johannes. Kafka. New Jersey: Englewood Cliffs, 1962. 53-59. Ryan, Michael P. "Samsa and Samsara: Suffering, Death, and Rebirth in ‘The Metamorphosis. '" The German Quarterly 725pr (1999): 134-149. 17 Oct. 2007.