¶ … Kafka's the Metamorphosis
Question # 3.) In this topic, discuss the symbolism in Kafka's "Metamorphosis." For instance, one of the most important images is the window and its relationship to Gregor's vision. There are also other equally important symbols too, like music, furniture, the apple, and Gregor's insect body. In this topic, analyze how Kafka uses symbolic objects and images to convey Gregor's pain and suffering. You can also connect Kafka's story to Bartleby or Gogol's "Overcoat." Just make sure that you should focus on Kafka's story and incorporate quotes from Kafka to illustrate your point.
Within the canon of classic Western literature, there have been few works of fiction which have inspired as much critical debate as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Originally written in 1912 and published in his native German in 1915, Kafka's masterpiece presents the curious dilemma of Gregor Samsa, a young man who readers learn in the opening line "woke up one morning from unsettling...
The fact that Kafka never reveals the source of his protagonist's mystifying transformation is the reader's first indication that this is a story rich with symbolic meaning, and as the narrative unfolds a number of figurative devices are used to convey a deeper message. When the contextual clues are considered in full, it becomes clear that Gregor's plight is much more than a fantastic tale of a man who became a bug; as The Metamorphosis actually represents Kafka's and his generation's increasingly disenchanted attitude toward the industrialization of society.
The fact that Kafka casts the young Gregor as a member of the working class, by revealing early Chapter 1 that "Samsa was a traveling salesman" (804), is significant to the overall motif of the story because his sudden conversion to an insect state suggests that he has somehow lost his sense of humanity. One of the first thoughts Gregor has after realizing the…
