This document provides an agenda and information for an online EWRT 1C class on Franz Kafka's novella "The Metamorphosis". The class will include reading the novella, an introduction to Kafka as the author, and discussing the historical and literary contexts. Kafka is introduced as an Austrian-Jewish writer from Prague in the late 19th/early 20th century. The novella is then analyzed including its use of third-person narration from the perspective of Gregor Samsa after he transforms into an insect. Students are assigned to read the novella and answer one of several discussion questions in 200-300 words for homework.

1. EWRT 1C CLASS 23:
ONLINE
Email me if
you need
help!

2. AGENDA
 Read The Metamorphosis
 Author Introduction:
Franz Kafka
 Historical Context
 Literary Style

3. Author: Franz Kafka
 Austrian Writer ( 1883 - 1924 )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpJ9r-

4. Brief Biography
 Kafka was born in Prague, a large
provincial capital of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire that was home to many Czechs,
some Germans, and a lesser number of
German-cultured, German-speaking Jews.
His father, Hermann Kafka, of humble rural
origin, was a hard-working, hard-driving,
successful merchant. His mother tongue
was Czech, but he spoke German,
correctly seeing the language as an
important card to be played in the contest
for social and economic mobility and
security.

5.  As a youngster, Kafka, like his father, has no more than the most
perfunctory relationship with Judaism. He dutifully memorized what
was necessary for his bar mitzvah, but he was already an atheist
 Writing early became an issue in the antagonism between Kafka and
his father; the latter continued to disdain writing as an unworthy
occupation long after Kafka became a published author.
 He received his doctorate in law on 18 June 1907.
 Kafka found a new job with the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute
for the Kingdom of Bohemia. He worked there until her retired in
1922.
 In August 1914 the thirty-one-year-old Kafka, having completed the
novella In der Strafkolonie (1919; translated as "In the Penal Colony,"
1941) and begun working on the novel Der Prozeß (1925; translated
as The Trial, 1937), finally moved out of his parents' home.
 He suffered a series of failed engagements. Much of Kafka's personal
struggles, in romance and other relationships, came, he believed, in
part from his complicated relationship with his father.
 After horrible suffering, he died on 3 June 1924 of tuberculosis of the
larynx.

6. Franz Kafka is one of the founders
of modern literature.
 His claim to greatness includes his service in completely collapsing the
aesthetic distance that had traditionally separated the writer from the
reader. In what is probably his most famous work of fiction, Die
Verwandlung (1915; translated as "Metamorphosis," 1936-1938), the
protagonist, Gregor Samsa, is presented to the reader as a man who has
become an insect; Gregor's condition is never suggested to be an illusion
or dream (although many critics have commented on its dreamlike
qualities). In his shock at the result of Kafka's unmediated aesthetic
distance, the reader is led to forgo his usual reflective and explicative
function. Kafka has his characters perform that explicative function--
hectically, repeatedly, self-contradictorily, and with a new kind of irony
that has come to characterize modern literature. Finally, in an age that
celebrates the mass, Kafka redirects the focus to the individual. His
characters stand for themselves as individuals; in the case of the male
protagonists--and almost all of his protagonists are male--they stand for
Kafka himself.

7. Historical Context
 For most of Kafka's lifetime, his home town of Prague was a Czech
city within a German-speaking empire, the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. Only at the end of World War I did that Empire disappear,
leading to the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia. But in
1912, when Kafka was writing The Metamorphosis, the Czechs had
not yet won their independence, and despite its Czech majority,
Prague was dominated by a German-speaking elite. Recognizing
where the power lay in the city, the Jews of Prague tended to identify
with the German minority rather than with the Czech majority; the
Czechs therefore considered the Jews to be part of the German
community, but the Germans themselves did not. As a result, it was
easy for the Jews to feel that they did not fit in anywhere.
 In general, Prague was a city of ethnic tensions, primarily between
Czechs and Germans and between Czechs and Jews. In 1897,
when Kafka was fourteen, the tensions erupted into anti-Semitic riots
started by the Czechs. Thus Kafka would have grown up knowing
hatred and hostility as well as the difficulty of fitting in.

8. Literary
Style

9.  Third Person/Limited Omniscient
 The story is mainly told through the
perspective of Gregor Samsa, as if the
narrator were planted with Gregor's human
consciousness inside Gregor's insect body.
We discover aspects of Gregor's body as he
himself discovers them. If he itches, we don't
know why until he looks to see what's making
him itch. If he's hungry, we don't know what he
likes to eat until he discovers his preference
for rotten foods.
 The narrator does break out of Gregor's
perspective on occasion and weaves into the
minds of other characters, most notably in the
last few paragraphs of the story after Gregor
dies.
Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and,
more importantly, can we trust her or him?

10. Technique
 This novella is an extended literalization of the
implications of the metaphor used in its initial
sentence. Gregor is metamorphosed into an
insectlike species of vermin, with Kafka careful not
to identify the precise nature of Gregor’s bughood.
German usage applies Kafka’s term, Ungeziefer,
to contemptible, spineless, parasitic persons, akin
to English connotations of the work “cockroach.”
Gregor’s passivity and abjectness before authority
link him with these meanings, as Kafka develops
the fable by transforming the metaphor back into
the imaginative reality of his fiction. After all,
Gregor’s metamorphosis constitutes a revelation
of the truth regarding his low self-esteem. It is a
self-judgment by his repressed and continually
defeated humanity.

11. Critical Overview
 Kafka today is a household word around the world, one of the few
writers to have an adjective named after him (‘‘Kafkaesque’’), describing
the dream-like yet oppressive atmosphere characteristic of his works.
When his writings first appeared, however, some reviewers found them
baffling, tedious, or exasperating; and the two extreme ideological
movements of the twentieth century both found his message
unacceptable. The Nazis banned him, and Communist critics denounced
him as decadent and despairing.
 But fairly quickly Kafka began to be praised by a host of influential
writers and intellectuals. The English poet W. H. Auden compared him to
Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. The German writer Thomas Mann,
quoted by Ronald Gray in his book Franz Kafka, said that Kafka's works
are "among the worthiest things to be read in German literature." And the
philosopher Hannah Arendt, writing during World War II, said (also as
quoted by Gray) that "Kafka's nightmare of a world ... has actually come
to pass.’’

12. Questions for Section 1
1. Discuss the details Kafka uses to establish Gregor’s
life before his metamorphosis into an insect. How
do these familiar details and objects define
Gregor’s character and life?
1. The relationship between Gregor and his father is
at the core of the story. Describe this relationship
both before and after Gregor’s metamorphosis.
1. Much of this part of the story, focuses on Gregor’s
inner life. Describe Gregor’s private thoughts and
emotions; use psychoanalytic theory to discuss his
attitudes toward his family and outside world.

13. Questions for Section 2
 Grete’s character undergoes a dramatic change in
section two. Trace the changes that highlight the
changes in her attitude, character, and personality.
Can feminist theory help explain her behavior?
 Gregor refuses to part with the picture of the
woman wrapped in furs on the wall. Why is it
important? Explain its symbolic meaning.
 In section two of the story, Gregor’s sense of guilt is
highlighted. Use Psychoanalytic theory to explain
Gregor’s guilt. Consider how his lingering guilt
affects his state of mind and his feelings toward his
family.

14. Questions from Section 3
 Discuss the three bearded lodgers. What is
their purpose in the story?
 It is clear from the outset of Part 3 that Gregor
is dying. How much of his physical decline is
his own doing, and how much of it is caused by
outside factors?
 Contrast Gregor’s state of mind at the
beginning of this section to right before his
death. What incidents or events cause a
change in Gregor’s attitude and thinking? Are
Gregor’s thoughts rational and clear, or are
they blurred and irrational?

15. HOMEWORK
Read Kafka’s The
Metamorphosis
Post #20 Answer
one of the questions
from slides 13, 14,
or 15 in 200-300
words