Following the travesties experienced in the first World War that left the international community torn apart at the seams and humankind questioning its existence, one specific genre dominated the literary scene: modernism. One of the most quintessential modernist author is commonly thought to be Franz Kafka. Over the years Kafka’s works have assumed a reputation as being considered “Kafkaesque,” a concept that may be understood as an incorporation of existentialism and absurdism. This concept may most clearly be illustrated in Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis. In The Metamorphosis, Kafka utilizes Gregor’s transformation into a bug as well as a nonchalant tone throughout the development of the story to illustrate the existentialist question
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Sure, they’re disgusted by the fact the fact he’s become a cockroach, however they aren’t too surprised by the transformation itself. No one attempts to fix it throughout the story. No one questions it. Everyone just blindly accepts it as an unfortunate fate that the universe has decided and moves on. Thus Kafka’s “absurdity of sin and guilt lies not in the indifferent world but rather in the very indistinguishability of the subjective and the objective” (Solomon: 1974, 170), meaning that the evil in the situation can’t be pin pointed to one exact entity. It rather just is; it’s senseless, purposeless, and …show more content…
When Gregor undergoes his metamorphosis, it begins to put life in perspective for him. Upon realizing that his life will never revert to the way it once, Gregor “starts realizing certain truths about his existence which had not come to his realization before” (UKEssays: 2015). Gregor’s family also then realizes that Gregor’s transformation is irreversible and that they must find a way to provide for themselves without Gregor’s income. Thus they move on with their lives while Gregor falls into a helplessness caused depression that he may only observe and do nothing about. Without his job, it seems that Gregor’s life has lost meaning. This counteracts the symbolic existential struggle of Gregor finding meaning in life through absolute dedication to his job, like many other people did, by negating with the absurdist idea that the struggle to find meaning is pointless in the grand scheme of the universe. Kafka asserts that nothing man does really matters since the universe is purposeless and anything can happen to destroy our perceptions of things, such as transforming into a massive
Sure, they’re disgusted by the fact the fact he’s become a cockroach, however they aren’t too surprised by the transformation itself. No one attempts to fix it throughout the story. No one questions it. Everyone just blindly accepts it as an unfortunate fate that the universe has decided and moves on. Thus Kafka’s “absurdity of sin and guilt lies not in the indifferent world but rather in the very indistinguishability of the subjective and the objective” (Solomon: 1974, 170), meaning that the evil in the situation can’t be pin pointed to one exact entity. It rather just is; it’s senseless, purposeless, and …show more content…
When Gregor undergoes his metamorphosis, it begins to put life in perspective for him. Upon realizing that his life will never revert to the way it once, Gregor “starts realizing certain truths about his existence which had not come to his realization before” (UKEssays: 2015). Gregor’s family also then realizes that Gregor’s transformation is irreversible and that they must find a way to provide for themselves without Gregor’s income. Thus they move on with their lives while Gregor falls into a helplessness caused depression that he may only observe and do nothing about. Without his job, it seems that Gregor’s life has lost meaning. This counteracts the symbolic existential struggle of Gregor finding meaning in life through absolute dedication to his job, like many other people did, by negating with the absurdist idea that the struggle to find meaning is pointless in the grand scheme of the universe. Kafka asserts that nothing man does really matters since the universe is purposeless and anything can happen to destroy our perceptions of things, such as transforming into a massive