Superb
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Incredibly witty, Kafka's is a writer of a remarkable sense of humour. The excitement and the thrill mingled in a flavour of mystique made his stories supreme. Kafka is simply superb!! The metamorphosis reflects some of Kafka's most personal issues; in its brilliant manifesto it conveys a harsh critique against both family and society. For what is wrong with being different? What does it mean? How does it affect one's life when one suddenly becomes vulnerable and weak? The dun beetle, I believe most readers might have guessed what Kafka meant by its chief role. The metamorphosis is simply superb. A real masterpiece.
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462nd interpretation of the Metamorphosis
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Metamorphosis is one of the most famous works in 20th C literature, and possibly has the most memorable opening lines in the history of story telling, - 'As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning after disturbing dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect'. The standard interpretation of this allegorical tale is that Gregor's transformation from hard working travelling salesman, providing for his family, to a grotesque useless insect that provokes disgust and pity and ultimately rejection by his family, represents physical disability, and society's treatment of it. I can see this in the story, but I read Kafka as essentially portraying his nightmare of the barrier between the public and personal inner world being removed. The private mental life, with its sensitive and raw secrets, its ugly and embarrasing little features, the desires and instincts that we strive to keep hidden, and/or are forced to repress. The bug is the embodiment of the ugly and raw inside turned out, exposed for all the world to see. Particularly nightmarish for Gregor (kafka) is the fact that those who see are those he loves and whose rejecton he fears most of all - his family.
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Kafka: a tortured existentialist genuis
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Metamorphosis is quite probably the greatest short story ever written. When I read it I always see it as a book about alienation, a theme that was later to be picked up on by the existenialists. This may go to explain why as a group they held Kafka in such high esteem. In the story Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find that he has been turned into an insect. The rest follows on from here. The change is showing how indivduals can become ostrasiced by natural differences, something that perhaps they are not even aware of. What surprises us in the book is not the fact that Samsa is an insect but more the attiude he takes to this, and the shocking social consquences of what has happened. The change in the a cockroack is simply symbolic of something that aroses disgust, something that we do not like, makes us feel uncomfortable and also something that we ternd to look down on. Having a large one in our house woulkd not be pleasant. This may sound nasty but it could be comaprtive to a baeggar, Kafka though is symapthetic to this and his portayal of Samsa is very touvhing. This idea that Metamorphosis is an exploration of al;ienation is backed up by closer analysis of some of his other works. Here we see people who becpome almost divorced from reality by a nightmarish and inexplicable bureacracy. Read this book now, then rerad it again, think some and then again.
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