In reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis for class last week, I noticed that the novella is framed in a way that highlights one of its central — if not the central — thematic concerns of the text. Figuratively, frames are a way to organize and structure reality. If you consider a photograph, it is framed or composed in such a way as to present the real world in an organized and predictable fashion.
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Get Inspired!
If you are familiar with Kafka’s work, it challenges conventional wisdom with surreal glimpses into real human problems, like making connections in a hostile word, overcoming our desires to control and conquer, and dealing with systems too big and too irrational to wrap our heads around. Gregor Samsa is forced to come to terms with the transformation of his body to match his soul.
On Kafka’s Metamorphosis
Not quite a tale of the supernatural, nor a unified allegory, nor a tale of the quotidian, nor a journey through the psychology of the characters, The Metamorphosis, like most of Kafka’s other writings, cannot be interpreted in a new critical manner. We must be comfortable with our discomfort, with our inability to neatly tie this piece up in one pretty bow.
Kafka’s Challenge
I think we ought to read the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us with a blow in the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and [...]