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Summary: The Metamorphosis
Review: The novel The Metamorphosis is about a traveling salesman named Gregor Samsa who awakes one day as a cockroach. Gregor is more concerened about the fact that he cannot get to work rather than the fact that he is a large insect. Gregor was always in the way, just like a pest, this figuritive representation of Gregor has now become a reality. I would recommend this book to anyone that is willing to look past the fact that Franz Kafka gives no justification as to why Gregor woke up one day as a cockroach. Other than that, I would see no reason why someone would not want to read this book, it is short, and easy to read. I would defiantly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a book to read.
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Summary: Are your turning into a roach?
Review: Must read to remain aware of signs that indicate (to others and/or to yourself) if you are slowly becoming what you hate. Compared with the creeping of Nazism in prewar Germany, it could be applied to most everybody that self-inflicts the ravages of convenience, laziness or stupidity: losing sight.
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Summary: My review of the Metamorphosis
Review: This story starts out with the main character, Gregor's infamous transformation into a dung beetle. Although he has transformed into a beetle Gregor maintains his human sense and feelings. The story then progresses on to describe Gregor and his family's reaction and how they dealt with Gregor's new form. Gregor himself is not that much effected by his new form. In fact he reacts very casually when he first finds out that he has become a monstrous beetle over night. His first major concern lies in his job and his ability to provide for his family. The family, however, has a much different reaction to Gregor's metamorphosis. They are shocked and frightened of the new Gregor. His mother faints numerous times upon seeing him and his family begins to treat him as no more but an insect. They soon neglect to see him as Gregor, the son and brother, but as some beast that burdens them. Their disgust towards Gregor soon leads them to neglect him physically.Kafka effectively uses Gregor's metamorphosis to develop the characters. Before the metamorphosis we can see that Gregor was an unhappy worker. He hated his job (a traveling salesman) and felt distanced from society. Becoming a beetle could be seen as a way for him to relieve himself of all these duties and obligations, but it only brings him more pain, as his family turns on him. This emphasizes the fact that either way Gregor is doomed to live an unhappy life. However, through it all, he only thinks about his family and wants the best for them. The family however isn't able to view Gregor as a human being in his new form. The only person who seems to care for Gregor initially is his sister, but that changes as the story progresses. The climax of the story occurs when the sister turns on her brother and tells her parents that they should get rid of "it." Gregor, overhearing this, chooses to die for the sake of his family. His choice to sacrifice himself for his family's happiness stresses his humanity despite his animal like appearance in comparison to his family's inhuman treatment and cruelty towards him. Overall, the Metamorphosis primarily deals with the faults of human nature, and that is the inability to accept the unknown and the inability to go past physical appearances. This book is very easy to read and it is very short. It should provide a fun reading experience. However, those who seek happily ever after endings should not buy this book, as it is very depressing and cynical.
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Summary: Worth all the praise.
Review: The Metamorphosis is a gem. It bothers me to see so many people who hated the story (most of them did not understand it) and it bothers me to see how many people read the book, understood the story but did not understand what Kafka MEANT by the story. One reviewer said it was boring, and that Kafka spends twelve pages describing someone getting out of bed, this is true, but very necessary in the book. Although the book is very short, you must read slowly and carefully to understand what the book means to YOU. This book means many different things to many different people. I would say it is one of the most argued stories in fiction. Some say it means this, some say it means that. What people don't understand is that fiction is very complex.
Fiction is my favorite type of writing because it is so versatile, ten people can sit in a room and read the same story and when they are all done reading it and they discuss it there will be ten different explanations on what the book meant. Some will be similar and some will be extremely different. There is no right or wrong in fiction. And I have never heard of a good writer who actually tells the world what they meant by their novels. Good writers know that people have different views on things; this is what makes fiction so beautiful.
I will tell you now what the book meant to me. I ask you not to be influenced by this because if you are you will not read the book well, when you read it you must read it like it came out yesterday and you must understand it for yourself, do not trust the cliff notes or any professor at school, there is no black and white here. I thought the book was about how we all feel ugly and insignificant (as a bug) around others. So many of us have little self-esteem, and it really ruins us. And you feel like a bug around your peers. I would tell you more but like I said before, I don't want you to read the book already knowing the meaning, read it and find your own meaning.
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Summary: preston,dan,brian,bernice,kai
Review: THE METMORPHOSIS
The Author Franz Kafka was born July 3, 1883, Kafka came from a middle-class Jewish family and grew up in the shadow of his domineering shopkeeper father. Kafka did well in the prestigious German high school in Prague and went on to receive a law degree in 1906. He soon found a position in the semipublic Workers' Accident Insurance institution, where he remained a loyal and successful employee until the beginning of 1917 when tuberculosis forced him to take repeated sick leaves and finally, in 1922, to retire. Kafka spent half his time after 1917 in sanatoriums and health resorts, his tuberculosis of the lungs finally spreading to the larynx. Kafka lived his life in emotional dependence on his parents, whom he both loved and resented. Kafka finally pasted away on June 3,1924 of Tuberculosis. His major novels include Der Prozess, The Trial, Das Schloss, The Castle, Amerika, The Metamorphosis and A Country Doctor. Passages from The Metamorphosis Gregor Samsa is really hung up on work and essentially is a money maching. Gregor just works a job he hates to provide for his family while having no life, no friends, and no real connection to his family. Gregor turns into a bug because through working Gregor becomes oppressed, alienated, and isolated, as are bugs in our society.
"Oh God" he thought " what a grueling job I've picked! Day in and day out on the road and the upset of doing business is much worse than the actual business of that in the home office..." pg4 His family actually became co-dependent on him because he provided all they needed, so in the big picture, Gregor's devotion to work wasn't really "good" for any of them. This is illustrated most strongly toward the end when his family finally gets off their collective [bottom] and they all get jobs and they are happier that way. Unfortunately this means that Gregor is and never was needed.
"We must try to get rid of it. People who already have to work as hard as we do can't put up with this constant torture at home too." pg51 Gregor soon dies which becomes a relief for the family as they all begin to smile and celebrate.
"Come in with us for a little while, Grete said Mrs. Samsa with a melancholy smile and Grete, not looking back at the corpse, followed her parents into the bedroom." Pg55
Thesis
Gregor is trapped in his job by his duty to his family, but he dreams of the day when he can finally pay of their debts and quit his job. His need for freedom from the restrictive demands of his work is expressed in his metamorphosis, by means of which he escapes. This escape however, fails to bring Gregor freedom, for he is now imprisoned by his family in his room. Thus when Gregor works, he is enslaved by his job and, when he doesn't work he is enslaved by his family. There is no way of balancing out freedom and duty, and in the end one is always a slave. Gregor escapes the pressures of his job by dying as a human and escapes his selfish family by dying as a bug. The only means of escape turns out to be death Preston
Dan
Kai
Bernice
Brian
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Summary: Odd
Review: The metamorphosis is a story that teaches about human nature. It depicts a family that is more comparable to a colony of ants than a human family. This colony works towards the best interests of the family. Gregor, their only son, is a hard working salesman that gives up all the traits that make himself human by pushing away other people and social interactions. His interest is only to pay off his family's debt. Once he is transformed into a dung beetle he is no longer able to produce for his family and begins to detract from the family's well being. In an attempt to keep their finances under control the family rents a room in their house. Gregor scares the tenants away when he shows himself in the living room. The colony realizes that Gregor is not helping their situation and plan to rid themselves of him. However before they have a chance to take any action Gegor dies from starvation. He had stopped eating months before because he was no longer able to pull his own weight in the family.
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Summary: My thoughts on the Metamorphosis
Review: Kafka is truly a great 20th century author and this book, along with "The Trial" are excellent and open to a huge number of interpretations. The bleak urban settings are some of the most memorable aspects. This book has a lot of essays and explanatory notes in the back that present theories about the deeper meaning (though you will want to think about it yourself before you read them). Why exactly the metamorphosis occurred is an issue you can think about. Gregor first seems to ignore the metamorphosis but later associates it with shame. In fact, it may represent some repressed side of him. Gregor's situation is made even worse by his family's failure to support him. This book is remarkable in that, while so much literature relies on extraordinary events or characters, the only real extraordinary event here is Gregor's unlucky transformation into a beetle. (Note, Kafka never actually says it is a dung beetle.) Everything after that is quite believeable and, while depressing, probably represents what would happen in real life and what does happen in so many people's lives that are never written about. The book manages to be both surrealist and brutally realistic at the same time.
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Summary: Are we all Gregor Sassma? Maybe, Franz, maybe...
Review: For all the debate and argument over what this story means, the plot of the Metamorphosis is refreshingly simple. Gregor Sassma wakes up one morning and discovers that, over the course of the night, he's been transformed into a giant insect. The rest of this novella deals with Gregor's attempts to adjust to his new condition without providing a burden for his parents (who he has spent his life supporting and, it is made clear, veiw their son as little more than a commodity to be exploited) or for his sweet younger sister who Gregor views with an almost heart breaking affection. For his efforts to not bother society with his new insect identity, Gregor is both shunned and eventually destroyed by that same society, which of course now has little use for him. As dark as that plot outline may sound, what is often forgotten (or simply ignored) is that the Metamorphosis is -- in many ways -- a comic masterpiece. Instead of engaging in a lot of portentous philosophizing, Kafka tells his bizarre tell in the most deadpan of fashions. Ignoring the temptation to come up with any mystical or scientific explanations, Kafka simply shows us that Gregor has become an insect and explains how the rest of his short life is lived. This detached, amused tone makes the story's brutal conclusion all the more powerful. As well, for all the theories on what Kafka's "saying" with this story, the reasons behind Gregor's transformation are not all that complicated or hard to figure out. Kafka, as opposed to too many other writers since, declines to spell out the specific reasons but still makes it clear that Gregor (and by extension, all the other Gregors in the world) had allowed himself to become a powerless insect long before actually physically turning into one. As someone who as selflessly sacrificed whatever independence he may have had to support his uncaring parents and their attempts to live an "upper class" life without actually having to suffer for it, Gregor has already willingly given up all the unique traits that make one a human. For me, even more disturbing than Gregor's fate, is Kafka's concluding suggestions that, now that Gregor has outlived his usefulness, his parents will now move on to his innocent sister. In short, despite the example of Gregor's own terrible fate, society will continue on its way with the majority of us giving up our own humanity to support the whims of a select few. From the brilliant opening lines all the way to its hauntingly deadpan conclusion, The Metamorphosis is a powerful and satirical indictment of the bourgeois condition. Over the past few decades, the term Kafkaesque has been tossed around with a dangerous lack of discretion. It seems any writer who creates an absurd or dark trap for his main character ends up being labeled Kafkaesque. However, as this story especially makes clear, Franz Kafka was more than just an adjective. He was a unique and individual writer whose brilliance cannot be easily duplicated.
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Summary: Buyer beware...
Review: I would not classify this as a novel. The story only lasts for 58 pages; the rest of this 201 page book is "Explanatory Notes to the Text." It is essentially a textbook on what the story means. That disqualifies this as a "good read" to all but the most snobbish literary geeks out there. I found nothing whatsoever about this story to be entertaining. It was exceedingly dull for being so short. For example, the main character spends the first 12 pages just thinking of how he'll get out of bed. It doesn't pick up much after that, either. If this is vintage Kafka, I will avoid all of his books from now on.
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Summary: An existentialist classic.
Review: First of all, you must understand before you begin this novel that it is not purely a work of light fiction intended to entertain young adults. It is, in fact, an existentialist novel in the classic sense, beginning with a premise which is of course both absurd and absolute: One morning the main character wakes up as a giant insect. For avid readers of literature, this is no big deal; clearly, this is a metaphor for the other less obvious but still all-too-real forms of absurdity and alienation we all feel as modern humans and with which the existentialists often concerned themselves. However, some students seem to have trouble getting past this -- so if you find the thought of reading about a giant bug-man distasteful, you should probably avoid this book. That said, it would be a real shame if you did, because this is among the most accessible of existentialist novels. Readers who have been frustrated or annoyed by the likes of Sartre and Camus may find Kafka's writing (especially in this work) fun, engaging, even lighthearted by comparison.
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