Study and philosophical analysis of "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka
by
agnisekharghoshgmailcom (student)
Enrollment No.A91606117031
Program-B.A English Name-Agnisekhar Ghosh
Deparment Name-Amity Institute of English Studies and Research AIESRK
Project Title- Study and philiosophical analysis of The metamorphosis Franz kafka
As Metamorphosis opens its intrapsychic action, Gregor Samsa, a chronologically mature travelling salesman, finds his ego world flooded by a volcanic explosion of the repressed traumatic experience of the terrible mother and the castrating father. He is, or imagines himself to be, transformed into a huge beetle, an object of consternation to himself, his family constellation, and his superego or employer; he is "so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed." There is a curious condensation of affect in the beetle: in one sense it is a fantasy introject of the hated or castrating father, for it is the father who attacks the son with the symbolic apples; yet the energy impacted in the form of the beetle represents the amount of libido incestuously invested in the maternal imago, for it is the apple which is used for the symbolic castration, and it is the preoedipal (terrible) mother who appears at the end of the story to sweep out the remains of the desiccated beetle into which Gregor Samsa had been metamorphosed. In the concluding scene or movement the father image achieves phallic identity through absorption and dominance of the three cigar-smoking gentlemen, and this genitalized libido transforms the violin-playing Grete into a marriageable young.Nor must we be misled by the fact that in the Metamorphosis it is the father image which hisses with the noise of many snakes and seems to be the force driving the beetle back into the symbolic womb. A less sensitive and realistic writer would have simplified the drama in a mechanical way, but Kafka had had plenty of personal experience of what he was writing about. He knew that in the nightmare the symbols and images are often bi-sexual and that emotionalized currents are switched from one dominant imago to its sexual complement. The bull-roarer in initiation is not too different from the Lamia, and the serpent who tempts the woman to sin is but a projection of a man's own inhibited sexuality. Such psychological realism is confusing only to those who have never known the depths of their own being; others read it as a sort of imaginative reminiscence of their own experience; hence the universality of Kafka's appeal.While the youthful businessman Georg Bendemann is sentenced to death in Kafka's allegorical world, the youthful business voyager Gregor Samsa in "Pass on Verwandlung" (The Metamorphosis) should experience the most recent months of his life in a similar world changed as a goliath bug, which looks like a cockroach."As Gregor Samsa stirred one morning from uncomfortable dreams he wound up changed in his bed into a tremendous bug." The needy proviso lets us know about this present reality, and—such is Kafka's inconspicuous style—something significant about the saint's past life. The fundamental proviso moves quickly to Gregor's allegorical state. During the most recent night, where he had nodded off in bed as a man, Gregor had "uncomfortable dreams,'' the consequence of an inward turmoil; and his contemplations after arousing uncover what caused them. He whines about the actual uneasiness of the business explorer, yet additionally about something considerably more significant, about the dehumanizing impact of his employment because of the continually changing human contacts, which never lead to close to home relations. To top it all off, he feels mortified by the top of the firm, who has the disturbing propensity for sitting on a high work area, so he can speak condescendingly to his representatives. Despite the fact that by customary scholarly and human norms a hopeless animal, this man imparts to numerous another legitimate character the awesome distinctions gave to him by an allegorizer: "The depiction of Gregor's supervisor has expansiveness enough to apply to a trivial office despot, yet even to a [ sic ] Old Testament God. Without a doubt, the reference to the high work area echoes the Old Testament illustration of the God 'generally high' who yet can 'hear' us." This "insignificant office dictator" would explode against Gregor should he be behind schedule for work. Since, as Gregor solidly accepts, his folks owe his manager cash he needs to remain with the detested occupation for five or six additional years.
