Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka Literary Analysis

The opening of a novel or play is what captivates the reader’s interest into the continuation of further reading. The first few lines are what set apart the readers first impressions, as to whether one should proceed in the continuation of reading or to back out over the threshold. The beginning of a novel or play as David Lodge, The Art of Fiction (London: Vintage, 2011, pg 5) exemplifies ‘is a threshold, separating the real world we inhabit from the world the novelist has imagined.’ Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis opens a climatic effect, as the reader is thrust upon the predicament of an overnight occurrence, unaware of any recognition of the protagonist’s transformation. The opening of Metamorphosis establishes an unconventional, activist quality that sets the pace and tone for the significant transformation experienced by Gregor Samsa and his family within Kafka’s realist dialect. Kafka diverts any typical conventions of fictional openings, as readers are left to use ‘a frame of cultural reference’ (how to read literature, pg 8) to establish the protagonist and surroundings of which is being described within Kafka’s fictional world, to speculate Kafka’s thoughts and beliefs on human condition and existence
The opening sentence of a novella is the first initial gasp and utterance of life. Much of the action within Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis consists with the first opening line, as Kafka attempts to come to terms with the physical change experienced by his protagonist, Gregor Samsa. The reader is thrust upon an immediate transition of Gregor, as he ‘awoke one morning from troubled dreams [to find] himself changed into a monstrous cockroach.’ (Kafka, Hofmann2007, p.87). Upon the opening of Metamorphosis, readers are stripped away from all traditional expectations of