Cultural And Contextual Alienations In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis

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In the interactive oral we discussed the cultural and contextual considerations of “The Metamorphosis”. This novella was written in 1915 by the Czech writer Franz Kafka. We focused on the sense of alienation and the existentialist qualities this literary work presents.
One of the first matters discussed was how Kafka’s own context had influenced many the concepts present in the novella. He was an outsider for being an existentialist in an orthodox family. He was also excluded for being a non-practicing Jew in a time and age in which groups were especially segregated and for speaking German in a Czech speaking community. The fact that he was Jewish could also be the reason for which he included many Biblical references in this work. Among these
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The rapid development of existentialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries occurred due to a vast amount of changes had recently taken place (among these, the industrial revolution) and had caused the separation of individuals within a society, people became isolated. Existentialism explores many aspects of life present in “The metamorphosis”, among these we distinguished free will, responsibility, shame, and the absurdity of life. Some of these could be seen through the way Gregor starts questioning his existence along with the possibility of him becoming an existentialist by the end of the novella, the responsibility that people had to contribute to society and to follow the “plan” that it has determined for …show more content…
We concluded that understanding how society pushes us to be what they want rather easy, as this still happens in this day and age. The distance between the parents and the children was particularly difficult for many of us to fully comprehend, as the strict and clear family roles have significantly changed since this novella was written. Due to this, some actions carried out by the characters may seem odd or unnecessary to us. One of our classmates brought up a situation that in which this had happened, it was the way Gregor was expected to pay for his family’s debts and had to meet society’s expectations without any complaints or say in the matter.
Our class discussion allowed us to reflect on the importance of the time and place in which “The Metamorphosis” was written and its relation to current times, allowing us to get a better understanding of this novella. I was particularly benefited by the discussion of Existentialism and the distance between the family members, which allowed me to develop my knowledge of the themes and character relationships in this

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