1. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) A Brief Biography and Introduction to his Novella, The Metamorphosis (w. 1912; p. 1915)

2. A novella is, as its name suggests, a short novel or a very long story. “a work of fiction intermediate in length and complexity between a short story and a novel.” novel NOVELLA

3. Part 1: A Brief Biography

4. Franz Kafka was born in Prague (Bohemia) in 1883. At the time Prague was the second major capital of the Austro- Hungarian Empire. Most of the working class people in Prague spoke Czech; the upper class spoke German. The origins of Kafka’s alienation are rooted in the social and cultural conflicts in which Prague was steeped: Czechs vs. Germans; Jews vs. nonJews.

5. Another (implicit) conflict existed in the union of his parents, since his father was middle class, while his mother came from an upper-class, German-speaking family.

6. German-speaking family. Hermann Kafka (father) worked initially as a traveling salesman; he then became a wealthy retailer of men’s and women’s clothing and accessories. Julie Lowy (mother) was the daughter of an affluent brewer.

7. Kafka was the first born son. He had two younger brothers who died in infancy. Of Kafka’s three younger sisters, he favored the youngest, Ottla.

8. Kafka’s father was reputed to be an over- bearing, materialistic, tyrannical man who valued making money above all else. He was critical of Franz’s literary efforts and viewed his son as lacking substance and ambition. Because Mrs. Kafka helped her husband run his lucrative business, the Kafka children were left in the care of a series of governesses and servants.

9. According to Dr. Grzegorz Gazda, a Kafka scholar from the University Of Lodz, Poland, the Kafka children did have one long-term positive surrogate parent—a Czech- speaking governess--Marie Wernerova, who remained in the Kafka household until her death in 1918. It was Wernerova’s presence that gave the children’s everyday lives more of a “family atmosphere.”

11. For most of his adult life, Franz Kafka was employed at the “Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. The job involved investigating personal injury to industrial workers, such as lost fingers or limbs, and assessing compensation. Industrial accidents of this kind were commonplace at this time.”Worker's Accident InsuranceKingdom of Bohemiapersonal injury

14. Kafka in Love

15. Kafka’s Romances: Engaged to Felice Bauer in 1914 but called off a few weeks later. Engaged again in July 1917 but due to Kafka’s failing health, the second engagement was broken in Dec. 1917.

16. In 1918, while convalescing in a Schelensen boarding house for tuberculosis patients, Kafka met a shy dressmaker from Prague, Julie Wohryzek. By the summer of 1919, Kafka proposed to Julie, much to his father’s objections, who suggested that his son would do better to visit a brothel than to marry a woman from such a low social standing. Kafka and Wohryzek amicably agreed to call off the engagement and remained friends.

17. 1920, Kafka had a serious relationship with the married Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenská. However, their relationship did not last.Milena Jesenská His final relationship was with 25-year-old Dora Diamant, a kindergarten teacher who volunteered at one of the last sanatoriums Kafka visited.

18. M i l e n a J e s e n s k a & F r a n z K a f k a

19. Kafka and Dora Diamant

20. Kafka borrows from a rich literary tradition of “transformation” or metamorphosis stories. The Theme of Transformation or Metamorphosis

21. “Wedding Preparations in the Country” Among Kafka’s unfinished manuscripts (Max Brod was Kafka’s literary executor) was a long story called “Wedding Preparations in the Country,” a fragmented work about Eduard Raban, a man who is reluctantly traveling to the country to prepare for his own wedding to his fiancé, Betty. Composed around 1907-08, but never published during Kafka’s lifetime, it contains common themes in Kafka’s work… “nonarrival” and “stasis.”

22. “WPITC” reads like an exercise in stasis: Eduard’s watch stops, he is preoccupied with the ineffectual forward movement of the horses’ “thin forelegs,” and notes the “light short steps of the people coming toward him.” The “carriage wheels squeaked with the brakes on,” and “the wind was blowing straight against him.” Eduard Raban so dreads the wedding plans that he imagines sending a BODY DOUBLE:

23. “I don’t even need to go to the country myself…I’ll send my clothed body…For I myself am meanwhile lying in my bed, smoothly covered over with the yellow brown blanket, exposed to the breeze that is wafted through the seldom-aired room….As I lie in bed I assume the shape of a big beetle, a stag beetle or a cockchafer, I think….The form of a large beetle, yes. Then I would pretend it was a matter of hibernating…and I would press my little legs to my bulging belly…”

25. I will stay in bed and pretend I am a stag beetle, hibernating. I will be your body-double and attend the wedding.

26. Please go to Part 2 of the Power Point Presentation on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.