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Edwin Honig The Making of Allegory
“Each character in the story may be taken as a personification of some particular defect, essentially related to G’s instigative needs”-allegory reversed. Personification is usually first and then discovery through this transformation. Here G discovers himself through others, and this new identity of his coming from others’ points of views is what causes his metamorphosis.
“Kafka’s Gregor Samsa has already been judged when the story beings”-Gregor has no chance of redemption, his fate is already chosen. It’s as if the climax (the judgment) happened before the story even started. There is no hope for Gregor.
“His dilemma is that he must challenge, grapple with, and seek protection from the judgment that society places on him for deserting his word, and at the same time accept the judgment, the guilt he actually feels, “lying down”.”-Gregor’ fight in this story is not against his metamorphosis but against the vision society and he has of himself for being useless. His conflict is with himself, with his guilt.
“What he becomes to his family and to himself as he lies in bed: simply a huge detestable bug.”“As he is seen by each in turn, there is a cumulative and recapitulative sense which confirms his physical metamorphosis.”-G becomes a horrid bug because it is exactly the way his family sees him. To each he is useless and repulsive like a bug which is why he turns into one. His physical metamorphosis is the image the world has of him.
“and as a result of G’s metamorphosis, his father, formerly a sick useless old man, turns into a vigorous job-holding bank official”- G helps his father emerge from his useless state of being.
“It is as though the family needed first to have the goad of the boarders’ social disapprobation in order to swallow its own distaste and personal chagrin, before finally expressing its own real feelings overtly.”-Almost like the family needed a reason to resent G. They were looking for an outside perspective because they didn’t know if because they were family they were being biased about the situation. The lodgers’ disapproval is the last straw for the family.
“This exposure of an exaggerated debasement gradually provokes a series of reactions among successive characters, who thereby assist in dramatizing the hero’s identity.”-dramatic effect of story not caused by the actually situation but by the reactions of his loved ones. If the family had supported and accepted G as a bug the story would say to love each other no matter what. His transformation wouldn’t have been tragic like it is.
“G’s situation is a limbo where the forces of appositional entities-dark/light, animal/human, lust/love, seeming/being, despair/faith”- G is torn by many different things. Shows how he’s in between and cannot make up his mind.
“The distorted relationship between himself and others, which he has permitted or encouraged to grow”-suggest G’s alienation is his own fault.
“Final criticism seems not to be leveled against society so much as against G, who sinks into his dilemma because he is unable to find his real self.”-author points out G’s downfall is his own fault. The criticism of the story is that G did not find himself.
“Instead of finding his many actual identities, he shrinks and is finally converted into nothingness.”- G epiphany is also his downfall. Because he decides to show himself he becomes nothing.
“no moral closure”“Ends with stark critical question of the individual and society”-very negative end. Kafka is trying to make us think….or realize something about the world we live in?
Max Bense Kafka’s conception of being
Max Bense (1910-1990) • Max Bense was a German philosopher who studied mathematics, logic and aesthetics. • He was a professor of the philosophy of technology, scientific theory, and mathematical logic at the Technical University of Stuttgart. • Many of his works such as “aesthetic Information”, “Aesthetica, an Introduction to New Aesthetics” involved the theme of aesthetics.
The Classical Conception of Being(page 140-141) “In the classical conception of being the fiction of a distinctive world which represents itself as a real world is constantly maintained and at best aesthetically and ethically varied between being and seeming, perfection and imperfection.”
The Non-classical conception of Being • “On the other hand, the fiction of the distinctive world is either given up from the start or successively destroyed.” • What is called surrealism […] comes under the non-classical conception of being, in which the fiction of the distinctive, real world no longer exists.”
How It Relates to Kafka’s writings “It is certain that essential parts of Kafka’s writings also belong to Surrealism and constitute surreality in the sense of a world in which the distinction between real and unreal constituents no longer has any ontological meaning.”
The Metamorphosis “And accordingly the obervable, real accuracy of the unreal found in Kafka’ or his percision with the imaginary […] does not signify an odd state of affairs: rational precision in the unreal is not itself anything unreal, as it is confirmed by the impression awoken for example by “the metamorphosis” of Gregor Samsa into a “monstrous vermin”.
Ralph Freedman Kafka’s Obscurity
Ralph Freedman’s . Born in Hamburg, Germany, and emigrated to the United States in 1940. . He served in the in the United States Army during World War II. . He graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle. . He holds a master's degree in philosophy from Brown University and a doctorate in comparative literature from Yale. . Hesse scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa and, since 1965, at Princeton. . Freedman has studied Hesse's manuscripts on deposit in Germany and Switzerland for several years and has traveled throughout the region of Hesse's homelands.
“Kafka’s fiction evolves as a problem-solving activity.” • In Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, this activity relates to Gregor’s condition: • Gregor as a bug = problem Nobody wants him and he’s hated not only by his family but by the rest of the world. Instead of being loved he’s rejected and is a problem for the Samsa family. • Gregor’s death = solution Sadly, Gregor’s death is the only solution for everyone including himself. Everyone in the novel is set free from this horrid vermin that “destroys” their lives. The family celebrates his death.
“ The objective author-observer introduces his character into a carefully specified world. Keeping all elements constant, he then observes his character’s adjustment to a particular change.” • “The story develops all consequent changes in both the hero and the world.” • “ it is concerned with different ways of knowing reality, of exploring the shifting relations between self and the world” In each of these quotes, the concept of change dominates the novel. Gregor has changed physically and mentally. The “changed” Gregor not only has an impact on himself but on everyone around him including his family. There is also an adjustment in this state of metamorphosis which is illustrated in the beginning with Gregor’s new life form… a bug!
“only physical appearances and perspectives seem to be changed while Gregor’s essential self appears unchanged.” • “But these changes are not wholly generated from within Gregor’s transformed shell. They are also conditioned by the world’s reactions to his condition.” Gregor is judge by his physical appearance, yet his inner soul, his own person hasn’t changed. No one cares to make even the slightest effort to see this. In the end, even Grete says that Gregor is not at all the same. Gregor’s inner-self is destroyed by his outer appearance, judged by the rest of the world.
“The wound eats more and more deeply toward the center of his self, his human consciousness and memory.” Once his father throws the apple, it no longer remains just a physical wound but a psychological one as well. . “ self-consciousness begins to dim and, with it, his sense of time. In the end, the obliteration of time coincides with Gregor’s obliteration” Gregor’s life is like a timed clock that once you loose track of it you’re gone. In this case Gregor’s loss of time cost him his life.
Gregor’s change leads to a adjustment for his family: • The father: Becomes the “authority” again, getting a job, and taking care of his family. • The mother and daughter need to adjust themselves to Gregor’s new needs. • “ For the helplessly observing Gregor, its change has become irrevocable.” • For Gregor, this change is irreversible, even before this transformation into a bug that he already is. • “He had in fact been a vermin, crushed and circumscribed by authority and routine, before the actual transformation had taken place:”
Freedman ends his critic with Gregor’s death and his family’s reaction toward it. • “his physical universe and paradoxical liberation from the bondage of himself ( the true and final transformation of the hero), the family we infer, had been similarly constricted and set free.” • “Gregor’s extinction has, in the end, • “Construction and freedom, obliteration and awareness of existence, equally apply” • Gregor’s death not only liberates him from the hatred, and unloving atmosphere that surrounds him, but also liberates his family.
