1. Comedy, Satire, and Irony
Talk in groups and try to decide what others find amusing or hilarious. Then try to classify comedy from satire and irony. What is the difference between them?

2. The Heroic Image vs. The Comic Image
List elements of a hero from last semester. Now think about a comic image of a hero. If a writer wanted to mock or undermine a hero, how might the author portray him/her? The next type of literature we will study shows a “metamorphosis” of the hero.

4. The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
Published 1915

5. Chapter One
When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes.

6. Kafka the Outsider 1883-1924; born in Prague German-speaking Czech
Jewish unbeliever
Harsh father; difficult relationship
Died of tuberculosis
Sisters later died in concentration camps

7. Modernism
Desire to discard ideas and values of the past and to find new ideas more applicable to 20th century life
Effort to capture reality of modern life in form and content
Disjointedness, alienation of modern life
Fragmentation and uncertainty of human experience

8. Is He a Bug? “monstrous vermin” “ungeheueres Ungeziefer”
No place in family,
without a place in God’s order.

9. Some Questions to Begin
Why is Samsa a “monstrous vermin”?
Is there a connection between SAMSA
How does this work relate to its historical/cultural context (Modernism)?
Is The Metamorphosis relevant today?
KAFKA