Background, style, and The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka Background, style, and The Metamorphosis

Biography Born July 3, 1883 in Prague, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic). Was the eldest of six children born to a middle-class Jewish family in Bohemia. The children, including Franz, were primarily raised by governesses, as both parents worked late hours.

Biography Was educated at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. Initially studied chemistry, but switched to law two weeks later. The switch pleased Kafka, because it allowed him a wider breadth of studies. Graduated with a Doctorate in Law.

Biography After university, Kafka worked a series of jobs, including a year of unpaid legal work, at an Italian insurance company, and as a governmental worker in the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. Despite Kafka’s indifference to his jobs, he was promoted several times.

Biography Suffered from a number of ailments during the course of his life, including tuberculosis, clinical depression, social anxiety disorder, migraines, insomnia, and other stress-related disorders. His tuberculosis worsened, requiring his committal to a sanitorium in Vienna.

Biography At the sanitorium, his tuberculosis worsened to the point where he could not eat due to the pain. He is believed to have died of starvation on June 3, 1924. His fate, ironically, mirrors that of Gregor in The Meta-morphosis and his protagonist in The Hunger Artist.

Style Translations of Kafka’s work can be difficult due to an syntactical idiosyncrasy of the German language; the sentences will often span paragraphs, even pages, delivering the impact at the end of the sentence. The first sentence of The Metamorphosis is an example of this difficulty. In addition, he frequently uses diction that, in the original German, has multiple meanings, allowing for the layering of meaning within a sentence. These layers can be lost in English.

Style Stylistically, Kafka’s work shows the influence of a number of schools of philosophical thought, primarily existentialism. Kafka’s work is also considered modernist, absurdist, and a precursor for the style “magical realism.” His influences include Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Existentialism Existentialism is a philosophy. Its adherents believe that individuals create the meaning in their lives. Existentialism is generally atheistic, believing that the individual is entirely free from any external forces (ie: gods, deities), making him or her responsible for the events of his or her life. It is only through this self-determination that we can rise above the absurd conditions of humanity, such as suffering and death. Existentialists believe that the “meaning” humans seek in life is ultimately unknowable.

Existentialism Existentialism is therefore opposed to philosophies such as rationalism and empiricism, which attempt to discover an order in the structure of the universe. Popular existential topics include “dread”, “boredom”, “alienation”, “the absurd”, “freedom”, “commitment”, and “nothingness”. The absurd, in particular, is important to surrealism. The universe, to existentialists, is indifferent, objective, and ambiguous; there is no order save what we peceive and interpret.

Existentialism Another important tenet of existentialism is Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead.” In existentialist thought, since humanity is responsible for its destiny and dissociated from outside forces, there is no need for God; He is obsolete.

Surrealism Surrealism develops a parallel to Kafka’s writing. Surrealism is an art of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions, and non sequiturs, encompassing sub-cultural expressions such as Dada.

Surrealism The surrealists defined their movement in their manifesto: “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”

Dada Surrealism was heavily influenced by Dada, a post-war movement positing that bourgeois, middle-class values (including art) were responsible for the war. Dada “art” would be better described as “anti-art”, evidencing the non-linear, haphazard sensibility that would define surrealism.

Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism

Modernism Modernism was a movement that opposed traditional views of art. Modernist artists hoped to discover and surmount that which was “holding back” artistic expression.

Modernism The ideas of Darwin and Marx are two examples of disruptive modernist thought that would permeate the literature and art of the movement. The Eiffel Tower was modernist architecture, breaking the traditional views of height and style.

The Metamorphosis The ambiguity of Kafka’s prose has led to innumerable interpretations of the novella. Freudians, Symbolists, Marxists, Absurdists, Surrealists; for ever “-ist” and “-ian”, there is an interpretation. The structure of the story is straightforward; it begins with the climax, and, in many senses, consists entirely of denoument and resolution. There are heavy autobiographical elements contained within the novella. For example, Kafka’s relationship with his father is evident; Gregor’s hideous transformation represents Kafka’s insecurity with his appearance; the menial existence of a traveling salesman his father lived; the absurdity of existence evident in Kafka’s existentialist views; finally a slight historical reference of oppression to minorities