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1 I Study GuideforTheMetamorphosisby Franz KafkaTHEGLENCOELITERATURELIBRARYC opyright by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Metamorphosis Study Guide9spare time. He also began to write short sketchesand other pieces of fiction. Soon after graduating with a law degree in1906, Kafka began working in a government work-ers insurance office. Like Gregor Samsa, the maincharacter of The Metamorphosis ,Franz Kafka stilllived with his parents. His work at the insuranceoffice, while dull, did leave some time for Kafka topursue his interest in literature. However, familytensions, the deteriorating health of his parents,and his own self doubts made concentrating on hiswriting difficult. He began to keep a diary and alsostarted work on his novel 1912, when he was twenty-nine, Kafkawrote The same year, he hadmet Felice Bauer, a visitor from Berlin.

2 Althoughhe was tortured by his usual self-doubts, Kafkabecame engaged to Felice in 1914. Three monthslater, he broke the engagement, worried that mar-riage and family life were incompatible with hiswriting. Several months later, they becameengaged again. In August of that year, Kafkafinally moved out of his parents home. He beganwork on a novel, The Trial,the dark, eerie tale ofa man arrested and executed for reasons he neverdiscovers. The year 1917 was a startlingly productiveone for Kafka, during which he wrote about adozen stories feature bizarre situa-tions and characters that embody the alienation,search for meaning, and despair of modern s health worsened, and in 1917 he was diag-nosed with tuberculosis. He took a leave ofabsence at the insurance institute.

3 He also brokehis engagement to Felice a second time. In 1918he became engaged to Julie Wohrzek, but thisengagement, too, he broke. The last years of Kafka s life were marked byperiods of intense writing activity, family tensions,unsuccessful love relationships, and worseninghealth. In 1922, he was forced to retire from theinsurance institute. When he was healthy enough,he continued to write. In 1924, however, he wentto a rest home in Austria, where he died at theage of forty-one. During Kafka s lifetime, only ahandful of his writings were published. Meet Franz Kaf kaI am separated from all things by a hollow space, andI do not even reach to its boundaries. Franz Kafka, in a letter of December 16, 1911 Franz Kafka was born in Prague, then a part ofthe Austro-Hungarian Empire, on July 3, was the oldest surviving child of Jewish parentsHermann Kafka, a successful merchant, and JulieL wy Kafka.

4 Hermann Kafka was an overbearingman who was never able to appreciate his son sspecial talents. The strained relationship betweenfather and son became the key element in Kafka spersonality and led to lifelong guilt, anxiety, andlack of young Franz was a good student and popu-lar with his classmates and teachers. Already, how-ever, the boy showed signs of an inward-lookingpersonality and the poor health that was to troublehim his entire life. He disliked the authoritariandiscipline of school life but found pleasure andescape in literature. The English novelist CharlesDickens was a 1901, when he was eighteen, Kafka wentto the German University in Prague. He studiedfor a law degree, a course of study approved by hisdomineering father and one that would lead to aprestigious job, but the young man found thecoursework boring.

5 His real interest was literature,and he attended many lectures and readings in his10 The Metamorphosis Study GuideCopyright by The McGraw-Hill Companies, is important to us because hispredicament is the predicament of modern man. British poet W. H. AudenKafka certainly does not provide aninterpretation of the world.. What heprovides is an image of how experience lookswhen all interpretations are called in doubt. British critic Anthony ThorlbyIt would have turned out much better if I had notbeen interrupted at the time by the business trip. Franz Kafka, writing about The Metamorphosisin his diaryThe Metamorphosisdraws readers into the night-marish world of Gregor Samsa, a young man whohas mysteriously undergone a monstrous transfor-mation. For many readers, Gregor s dehumanizingmetamorphosis and subsequent feelings of alien-ation epitomize the human condition duringmodern himself felt that The Metamorphosiswasone of his more successful achievements, and it isprobably his most widely read work today.

6 Withthe exception of one event, the plot is almosthumdrum in its realistic description of family ten-sions and economic worries. Kafka s clear, straight-forward style belies the terror beneath the surfacedescription. The neutral tone of the story alsoreinforces the feeling that the Samsas are a normalfamily with one startling exception. The storynever becomes cartoonish because the unreality ofthe situation is undercut by the realistic treatmentof the aspect of The Metamorphosisthat is fre-quently overlooked is its humor. Humor is a com-mon response to emotional pain, and laughing inthe face of hardship is not unusual. Many readersforget to notice the comical aspects of the story intheir search for serious meaning. Kafka s humor isespecially apparent in Chapter One, as Gregormakes adjustments to his new you read this puzzling work, keep in mindthat scholars and critics have argued for almost acentury about what it means.

7 One reason forKafka s immense influence and popularity is thisopenness to many interpretations. Readers canfind evidence in The Metamorphosisto support avariety of interpretations of the odd, yet heart-breaking, events. Because Kafka is not the kind of writer whowill take you by the hand and lead you to hismeaning, you will need to find your way thereyourself. On the way, you may learn to look atyourself and others differently and you certainlywill never think of insects in the same way afterreading The TIME AND PLACEThe novella takes place in an apartment in anunnamed city and unspecified time, although the setting resembles Prague at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Kafka wrote TheMetamorphosis. At the time of Franz Kafka s birthin 1883, Prague was the capital of the kingdomof Bohemia, a province of the Austro-Hungarianempire.

8 Today it is the capital of the CzechRepublic. The population of the city in 1900,when Kafka was seventeen, was about one-halfmillion people. Prague has been called a City of ThreePeoples. In Kafka s time, almost all Prague resi-dents were ethnic Czechs who spoke the Czech language. But about 6 percent of the city s popu-lation were German speakers. Jews made upabout 5 percent of the population, and some ofthem, as did Kafka s family, spoke German astheir first Kafka s double minority status, as aGerman-speaking Jew in a Christian, Czech-speaking world, had a powerful influence in shapinghis personality. Jews and Germans mixed peacefullyand actively with the majority Czechs, but theyhad their own schools, newspapers, publishingcompanies, organizations and societies, theaters,and cafes.

9 Nevertheless, Prague s German-Jewishminority had a strong influence on the culturallife of the city and included many writers, artists,and intellectuals. Kafka was active in these circlesfor most of his the NovellaCopyright by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Metamorphosis Study Guide11 The Metamorphosis is generally assigned toa categor y of fiction known as the novella,novelette,or short are longerand more complex than short stories butshorter and simpler than novels. Short storiesusually contain one major conflict, focus onone major character, and develop one majortheme, whereas novels present a much largerfictional world with many characters andepisodes. The novella usually focuses on alimited number of characters, a relativelyshort period of time, and a single chain novella form has attracted many ofthe greatest writers.

10 Among the best-knownnovellas are Joseph Conrad s Heart ofDarkness,Henr y James s The Turn of theScrew, and Herman Melville s Billy read The Metamorphosis ,ask yourselfwhy Kafka chose to limit the length of hisstor y. How might it have been different if theauthor had chosen to make it a novel? Whatmight The Metamorphosis have lost or gainedif it were written in a different form?Did You Know?German-Jewish influence declined sharply,however, following the end of World War I, whenthe Austro-Hungarian empire was broken up. TheCzech provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and part of Silesia combined with Slovakia to form theindependent nation of Czechoslovakia. 12 The Metamorphosis Study GuideCopyright by The McGraw-Hill Companies, ACTIVITYT hink of a situation from a dream you have had that seemed incredibly real at the time but that could notactually happen in real life.