Franz Kafka – Introduction
So let’s return, shall we, to our tried and tested Encyclopedia Britannica for an introduction to the life and work of Franz Kafka.
Encyclopedia Britannica – Franz Kafka
Your discussion task: You can talk about one of two things (or both, if you like):
- What stands out about Kafka?
- When reading the biography of an author, what’s more important: his personal life, or his works?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
This is Franz Kafka’s most famous story, the novella Metamorphosis.
Other formats (Word file, EPUB, Kindle, all free)
You can also find audio versions on YouTube.
Your discussion task: What is your biggest takeaway from the novella? (Please note: when I say “takeaway,” this can mean almost anything. The point here is that you don’t have to try to figure out what the novella means – in literary studies nowadays we frown upon the notion that a work of literature can mean something. At most we might talk about what a story means to us, how it resonates for us. Think of that when answering this question: what impact does the story have on you? If it makes you feel something, what is it that you feel? If it causes you to reflect on some aspect of human existence, what aspect exactly does it cause you to think about?)
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Kafka and expressionism
Expressionism is considered to be one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century. It originated in the German-speaking world, first in the visual arts (painting and film) and then in the production of literature up to about 1925 or so. Gerhard Knapp writes in The Literary Encyclopedia that writers associated with expressionism “shared the collective feeling of alienation and displacement in a world ruled by rigid patriarchal structures and propelled into modernity by urbanization, industrialization and rampant technology: a world out of kilter and drifting towards catastrophe.”
Kafka would not have considered himself an expressionist, but his writings are often categorized as expressionist texts. Common to expressionism is a distortion of reality that creates a heightened emotional state on the part of the subject (the character experiencing the distortion). The reader in turn experiences the mood that this distortion creates.
When you think about the tumultuous changes of the early 20th century, both the positive ones (for example the arrival of mechanized flight and faster communications) and the negative ones (the destruction of the European order brought about by the First World War, and the mechanized destruction of that war that caused unheard of carnage), it’s probably no surprise that there was some unease (to say the least) among artists, writers, and thinkers at this time.
Your discussion task: In what ways does The Metamorphosis demonstrate some of the concerns mentioned above? Provide specific examples of how a passage, event, or character in the story evokes, explicitly or implicitly, one of these problems.
BONUS MATERIAL: This very funny video:
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Kafkaesque
When an author’s or a thinker’s name becomes an adjective (Marxist, Freudian, Nietzschean), you know they’ve had an impact. The same has happened to Kafka: kafkaesque. But in Kafka’s case it is a much more difficult term to define. Kafka’s writing is hard to pin down, so why should an adjective derived from his name be any easier?
The Canadian Oxford English Dictionary defines kafkaesque as “impenetrably oppressive, nightmarish.” In a New York Times article from 1991, Frederick Karl, a biographer of Kafka, defined kafkaesque this way:
“What’s Kafkaesque,” he said in an interview in his Manhattan apartment, “is when you enter a surreal world in which all your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior, begins to fall to pieces, when you find yourself against a force that does not lend itself to the way you perceive the world.
“You don’t give up, you don’t lie down and die. What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have. But of course you don’t stand a chance. That’s Kafkaesque.”
This short video from TED ED also tries to explain the term:
Your discussion task: Describe a situation in The Metamorphosis that is Kafkaesque.
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Kafka and YOU
Read this article by John Kaag, a professor of philosophy in the United States. In it he talks about how Kafka has become more relevant in the age of Trump.
“Post-Trump, even my cheeriest students ‘get’ Kafka”
The article is a little over the top (personally I’m skeptical about the scene where he has to run out of the classroom because he’s so overcome with emotion), but it raises an interesting question about the impact literature can have on us. Novels and stories are created in a certain place and time by a certain person, and therefore that place (geography, environment), that time (the political and social situation), and that author’s life (their biography, their interactions with family, their education, their personality and mental make-up) can all have an influence on the story.
Some stories seem very much anchored in the context of their creation (place, time, author), and others seem able to exist beyond those. Shakespeare’s plays are still produced some 500 years after their creation; stories from the Bible or the Quran or the Torah are much older and are still found to be meaningful today.
Your discussion task: How does The Metamorphosis resonate today? Does it resonate on a social/political level? On a personal level? On both levels?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Specific Instructions for this Review: Kafka
Watch this ProfMoment:
(The review referred to in the video: Robert Minto, “The Disgraceful Lowlands of Writing,” Open Letters Monthly: openlettersmonthly.com/the-disgraceful-lowlands-of-writing/)
Dr. Wolff asked Kafka: So please tell me what my cousin ought to make of The Metamorphosis. And that’s my question for you: what are we to make of The Metamorphosis?
As always, feel free to make use of the content items in the module and the postings of your classmates when composing your answer.
Pro tip: to do well on this Module Review, you need to pose an argument or thesis. Description or analysis isn’t enough; you need to arrive at an interpretation of the story, an explanation of what message (or messages) can be taken from the story.
600-750 words
General Instructions for the Module Reviews
Please keep the following in mind:
- your answer should be uploaded as a Word document. If you don’t have Word, please save your answer as a .docx file in the word processor of your choice.
- your answer should be double-spaced.
- no title page, but there should be a title, your name should appear at the top, and there should be page numbers.
- answers should be within the specified word range.
- good essays have grammatically-correct sentences, coherent paragraphs, no spelling mistakes, and a clear argument or point.
Please note: the question may ask you to make use of the discussions that occurred in the module. There are two modes for viewing the discussion forums, GRID VIEW and READING VIEW. (You can change which you view by clicking on the settings – the gear icon – in the upper right-hand corner of your screen when you’re in the Discussions area of the course.) Play around with the two views to find the setting that works best for you. For example, when I’m reading your discussions during the week and commenting on some of them, I use the READING VIEW, but if I have to read and grade a lot of postings I use the GRID VIEW.