Later, Gregor's enraged father violently illustrates the old social maxim that appearances really do matter, by pelting his stubbornly-metamorphosed son with apples in a fury one day. Soon afterward, Gregor dies. In most cases, human beings are saddened when a son or brother dies, but in this case, the remaining Samsa family members, with the possible exception of little sister Grete, are actually relieved. Gregor's metamorphosis and subsequent death forces upon each of them a metamorphosis of his or her own: ironically, Gregor's physical metamorphosis forces each of them back into life, like butterflies finally emerging from especially stubborn cocoons. Here, Kafka is pointing out the fallacies and limitations of typical human assumptions about first (in Gregor's case) what one "should" do for others; and second, in the cases of his parents and sister, what...
Here, Kafka implicitly forces us to re-examine our own proscribed and automatic social roles, and our assumptions about our crucial importance to others, and/or others' crucial importance to us.
Kafka's Trial "Here there is no why" Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz. Attempting to determine what Franz Kafka really meant in any of his stories is a difficult undertaking, given the absurdity and irrationality of the situations he describes and characters that do not seem to function or react as 'normal' human beings. This is especially true in his unfinished novel The Trial, where the young and successful bank executive Joseph K. is
Boccaccio's Decameron Day Four Story Two begins on an ironic note. Among the plague-shy aristocrats who are Boccaccio's assembled storytellers, the King has specifically requested a sentimental love tragedy to suit his mood, and requests it directly from Pampinea. But as Boccaccio tells us, Pampinea is in no mood to oblige the King straightforwardly here: "she decided, without straying from his theme, to tell a humorous story. She began in
Balzac and Kafka: From Realism to Magical Realism French author Honore de Balzac defined the genre of realism in the early 19th century with his novel Old Man Goriot, which served as a cornerstone for his more ambitious project, The Human Comedy. Old Man Goriot also served as a prototype for realistic novels, with its setting of narrative parameters which included plot, structure, characterization, and point-of-view. The 20th century, however, digressed
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