METAMORPHOSIS (The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka)

Name: NeilG1

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Product:	The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Date:	24/09/05 (246 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Surreal imagery, gripping story

Disadvantages: none

Franz Kafka was born in Czechoslovakia, yet went on to become one of the
greatest writers in the German language. Metamorphosis is along side The Trial,
his greatest work. The book Metmorphosis contains several other stories but I
will concentrate on the title story since this varies between editions.

Metamorphosis is the story of a young man who wakes up one morning to find he is
turning into an insect. At first he tries to hide this from his family by
locking his door and avoiding human contact. He soon loses his job and thus is
unable to support his household including his mother, father and sister. His
family find out about his condition and have to find a way to look after him
though they find his appearance disgusting. The story is narrated through the
creature/man's eyes and you see how he is affected by this change amongst them.
At first they believe the creature has killed him and when they realise the
truth, they seem even more disgusted. Eventually, lacking the money he used to
bring in, they have to find work and let lodgers into their home to pay the
bills, whilst keeping their son secret.

Kafka uses the idea of his protagonist change as a device to show the problems
he saw in German society at the time. The family face huge poverty in the story
and the vilification directed towards the son can be seen as a symbol of the
persecution Kafka may have felt as a Jew. Though this was written before the
times of Hitler's Aryan ideals, there was still a sense of antisemitic feeling
in German society at the time. Overall, Kafka creates a surreal world all of his
own in this story, as with many of his others and yet manages to keep the reader
emotionally attached to a character that they would obviously not identify with
otherwise.

Summary: This is an excellent novel that lives up to its rating as a classic