Cows and their life

Schedule for The Metamorphosis*
Assignment Due Date
Surrealism and Existentialism Word Webs ________
Franz Kafka and The Metamorphosis ________
Reading Guide Chapter 1 ________
Reading Guide Chapter 2 ________
Reading Guide Chapter 3 ________
The Metamorphosis Quiz ________
Kafkanesque Images and Symbolism ________
Character Attribute Chart ________
Post Reading Discussion ________
The Metamorphosis Glossary Vocabulary Test ________
What is an Allegory?/Gregor’s Metamorphosis as Allegory ________
Allegory and Symbol Parts I-IV ________
Symbolism in The Metamorphosis ________
The Metamorphosis Test ________

*Note: Dates are subject to change.

Word Webs:
Existentialism and Surrealism

Franz Kafka and The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis Reading Guide Chapter 1

Chapter 1
1. What is Gregor Samsa’s initial reaction to his metamorphosis and the part of his “new life” that troubles him?

2. What are examples of Gregor’s denial of his transformed condition?

3. What is Gregor’s view of his job and the summation of his life.

4. What is Gregor’s opinion of his boss?

5. What is Gregor’s relationship with each of his family members?

6. How is Gregor’s locked door a symbol?

7. Describe the symbolism of weather.

8. What affect does the arrival of the office manager have on the family?

9. Describe Gregor’s voice and the reactions he gets from the manager, his mother, his father and describe Gregor’s to their reaction.

10. Describe the manager, his mother, his father reactions to Gregor’s appearance and he to them.

The Metamorphosis Reading Guide Chapter 2

Chapter 2
1. What differences occur in Gregor and his family following his metamorphosis?

2. What are Gregor’s primary concerns, the effects of those concerns, and what they indicate about him and his family?

3. Characterize Grete by Gregor’s memories, her actions, and her thoughts.

4. Characterize Mr. and Mrs. Samsa.

5. Examine indications of Gregor’s increasing alienation from his family.

6. What is the importance of removing furniture from Gregor’s room?

7. Removing furniture from Gregor’s room is the turning point of the story. How and why?

8. Why is the picture of the woman in the fur important to Gregor?

9. Describe the confrontation between Mr. Samsa and Gregor.

10. How is the confrontation between Mr. Samsa and Gregor filled with religious symbolism?

The Metamorphosis Reading Guide Chapter 3

Chapter 3
1. Describe the wound Gregor has and who he got it.

2. Describe the changes in the family since Gregor’s metamorphosis.

3. Why does Gregor’s pain intensify after his father goes to bed, and his mother and sister draw close to one another and close the door?

4. What are the causes and effects of the boarders arrival?

5. What does Gregor mean when he says, “I’m hungry enough, but not for these things. Look how these roomers are gorging themselves, and I’m dying!”?

6. How does Grete “abandon” Gregor and what are the results of the abandonment?

7. How is Gregor’s death discovered?

8. What is the family’s reaction to Gregor’s death?

9. Describe the metamorphosis each family member of Gregor’s family has gone through?

10. Analyze this statement: “...they thought it would soon be time, too, to find her a good husband. It was like a confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions...”

The Metamorphosis Post-Reading Discussion Questions

1. Analyze Gregor’s physical and emotional decline.

2. Contrast the Woman in Fur with Grete.

3. Trace the steps of Gregor’s increasing alientation. What is the evolution?

4. Discuss the significance of the time of day in each chapter.

5. Examine the use of the number 3 in the novel. (Kafka had three sisters.)

6. Discuss the various types of conflict that Gregor experiences.

7. Reread Grete’s final speech and discuss why it signals the end of the conflict in the novel.

8. To what extent does Gregor Samsa symbolize man’s hopeless entrapment in the middle-class cycle of life that is a kind of death? In what sense is actual death the only escape from such a frighteningly empty life? Are other options available?

9. Attempt to apply the principles of existentialism to this novel. Consider as many of the following as possible:

a) “existence precedes essence”

b) “condemned to be free”

c) “being for itself”

d) “being in itself”

e) “being for others”

f) “nausea”

g) “absurd”

h) “moment of consciousness”

i) “bad faith”

j) “authenticity/inauthenticity”

k) “love is looking together in the same direction—not turning others into objects or dependents”

l) “existentialism is a humanism”

m) “one must consider Sisyphus happy”

10. To what extent does this novel qualify as BOTH surrealist (“more than real” “an exploration of a ‘higher’ reality”) and existentialist (an exploration of man’s freedom in a meaningless universe)? Write at least two paragraphs below.

Allegory and Symbol

I. ALLEGORY. An allegory is a story with a double meaning: a primary or surface meaning; and a secondary or under-the-surface meaning. It is a story, therefore, that can be read, understood and interpreted at two levels (and in some cases at three or four levels). An allegory is often used to express generalizations about human existence and/or teach religious or moral lessons. It is thus closely related to the fable and the parable. The form may be literary or pictorial (or both).

II. SYMBOL. A symbol is an object (or a person, place, activity) that stands for something beyond itself. Certain symbols are “conventional” and frequently used (e.g. scales representing justice). Other symbols, however, are “private” and acquire their meanings within the contexts of the works in which they appear.

N.B. Symbols are often used within the context of an allegory in order to help the reader see the second (and more important) “under-the-surface” meaning of the tale.

III. SYMBOLS IN THE METAMORPHOSIS. In order to understand the overall allegorical meaning of this story, it is necessary to begin by analyzing the specific symbols. What do you think the following symbols “stand for”? What meaning do they “point to”?

1. Gregor’s job as TRAVELING SALESMAN:

2. The MAGAZINE CUTOUT OF A LADY IN FUR:

3. The PARENTS’ DEBT to Gregor’s boss:

4. The ALARM CLOCK:

5. The KEY and LOCKED DOORS:

6. The WINDOW:

7. The HOSPITAL across the street (that gradually becomes invisible to Gregor):

8. The STICKY SLIME Gregor produces:

9. Gregor’s FRETSAW (used to make a pretty frame for magazine cutout):

10. The role of UNIFORMS (in Gregor’s portrait; for Gregor’s father):

11. MILK that Gregor can no longer stomach:

12. The ROOMERS:

13. MUSIC (especially’s Grete’s violin music):

14. APPLES thrown by the father:

15. DUST and JUNK:

16. Mother and Sister CLEANING OUT THE FURNITURE:

17. Gregor’s ATTACHING HIS HOT BELLY TO PICTURE:

18. Gregor’s desire to KISS HIS SISTER’S BARE NECK:

19. The cleaning lady’s BROOM:

20. The EXCUSES written by the Samsa family:

IV. THE ALLEGORY: Can you pull all these strands together and write at least two paragraphs below in which you summarize the “under-the-surface” meaning of this story?

Study Questions on Kafka's The Metamorphosis
Dr. Tina L. Hanlon
"The terror of art is that the dream reveals the reality."
Kafka in a discussion of The Metamorphosis
Background: Franz Kafka, one of the most influential writers of the early twentieth century, was born in Prague in 1883 and died in 1924. He was Jewish in Catholic Czechoslovakia, the son of a German-speaking shopkeeper. His father pushed him into business but he was interested in literature. Kafka lived with his parents most of his life although he felt neglected by his mother and pressured by his father. He earned a law degree and worked in a large accident-insurance corporation until he died of tuberculosis in 1924. Before his death he published a number of short stories and two novellas, including The Metamorphosis (1915). His executor Max Brod ignored Kafka's instructions to burn his manuscripts, instead publishing three novels that were nearly completed at his death. The predicaments and terrors described in his writing have been considered relevant to modern readers since Kafka's early death. He did not live to see his three sisters die in concentration camps, but some of his works seem to predict conditions of the World War II Holocaust. In his personal writings and fiction, Kafka reveals the torment and frustrations of his life: his illness, lack of success in love, unhappiness with his family, resentment of his beaurocratic job and an indifferent or oppressive society, and general feelings of inferiority.
His characters' lonely search for the meaning of individual existence in a meaningless or indifferent world reflects Kafka's existentialist views of life. People who are not dependent on older belief systems or institutions have freedom that also brings anxiety and guilt with the responsibility for constructing the meaning of one's own existence. Kafka had no association with Surrealist writers or artists, who saw hidden miracles of existence behind everyday reality. Kafka's works are sometimes called surreal because of his blend of matter-of-fact everyday reality and dream or nightmare images, but his vision of the ordinary person's impossible struggles to control life is quite different from the views of the Surrealists who came after him. Like absurdist writers of the mid-twentieth century, Kafka depicted irrational, anguished people in nightmarish situations, unable to form significant relationships with(in) their environment. Later in the twentieth century, the development of magic realism might also be compared with Kafka's writing, as fantastic events are depicted as if they are a part of everyday reality.
1. What is the effect of Kafka's matter-of-fact assertion of the bizarre incidents with which the story begins? How does Kafka keep the way it came to pass from becoming a major issue in the story?

2. What is the relationship between realism and fantasy in this story? What are some details that make the fantastic story credible?

3. What are Gregor's concerns in section I? To what degree do they differ from what would matter to him if he had not been transformed into an insect?

4. Why does Gregor dismiss the idea of calling for help when he tries to get out of bed?

5. What seems most important to members of his family as he lies in bed?

6. How do you view the reactions of Gregor's parents to their first view of his metamorphosis? What circumstances in ordinary life might elicit a similar response?

7. What is the significance of the view from Gregor's window?

8. Trace Gregor's adaptation to his new body. In what ways do the satisfactions of his life as an insect differ from the satisfactions of his life as a traveling salesman?

9. When Gregor's father pushes him back into his room at the end of section I, why does Kafka call it "literally a deliverance"?

10. How does Grete treat Gregor in section II? Is he ill?

11. What are Gregor's hopes for the future? Is there anything wrong with those hopes?

12. For a time, Gregor is ashamed of his condition and tries to hide from everyone. In what way might this be called a step forward for him?

13. What conflicting feelings does Gregor have about having the furniture taken out of his room? Why does he try to save the picture? What might Kafka's intention be in stressing that it is on this occasion that Grete calls Gregor by his name for the first time since his metamorphosis?

14. Why does Gregor's father behave as he does when Gregor "breaks loose"? Explain the situation that has developed by the end of section II?

15. How does the charwoman relate to Gregor? Why is she the one who presides over his "funeral"?

16. Compare the role of the lodgers in the family with Gregor's role. Have they supplanted him? Why does Gregor's father send them away in the morning?

17. How does Gregor's condition deteriorate by the end of the story, in his environment and within himself?

18. How does Gregor's family behave at the end of the story? What are your reactions to the events and atmosphere at the end?

19. What symbolic objects or other details appear in the story? Do they have connections with earlier mythologies or legends or literature?

20. How does this story compare with other transformation stories or animal stories you have read? What makes the narrative approach of this modern story different from a folktale?