World War I

I watched through the video twice trying to read through the meaning. I think this video was very interesting and I think it has to do with PTSD in a way. The starfish is being compared to women. The first line "women's teeth are objects so charming..." make me think of the bumps or spikes on a starfish. They are a part of what makes it beautiful, but they can also be sharp. It is followed by "...that one ought only to see them in a dream or in the instant of love". Women should only appear in a dream or if they are in love, to be loved. "We are forever lost in the desert of eternal darkness", this line is what first made me think of PTSD. This makes me think of insomnia. When asleep you are lost and dreams do not come, but nightmares. This also makes me think of being awake when your thoughts turn toward the darkness and remembering the dreadful horrors of the war. There are other lines throughout this video comparing women to starfish. They are flowers of glass, they are beautiful, like a flower of fire. These lines all point to different aspects of the woman. She is fragile, but beautiful and she also burns like fire, intense, but warm.

Towards the end of the video the woman is beautiful, was beautiful and then just beautiful and then glass breaks. She is beautiful when she is yours, but when she turns on you she was once beautiful. She is still beautiful, but the broken glass shows that she is broken because of her actions. The majority of the video looked as if it had a blur over it so it could not be seen clearly. It seemed like it was being shown as if it was a haze or a dream, maybe even a nightmare, especially when the woman is holding a knife in the threat of death. It seems like the woman is untrustworthy, like a starfish. They may be beautiful, but you do not know when or if they may cut you. I thought the video was very bizarre, but had definite meaning behind it.   

Though it was written prior to World War I, “The Metamorphosis” comments on modernity in a similar manner as War literature. For example, Kafka’s story repeatedly discusses the dehumanizing effects of modern work. Very obviously, Gregor turns into a bug—he is literally dehumanized. Symbolically, this change can be read as an effect of the enormous amount of energy and life he puts into his work. His job sucks the life out of him, and it reduces him to a piece of vermin.

World War I soldiers also felt incredibly dehumanized as a result of the work they had to do. The poison gas and alien-like masks, the condition of living in a ditch like an animal, and mechanized fighting all contributed the dehumanization. Many War veterans probably felt as though they had metamorphosed into some lesser being as a result of their experiences. 

Metamorphosis tells about the desperate struggle of a family fighting the effects of a tragedy brought on for seemingly no reason.  When Gregor transforms, his family is forced to deal with the repercussions, just as families had to deal with the aftermath of World War I which, to many, had seemed to take very many lives for very little reason.

I couldn't help but find a larger connection, however, between Gregor's struggles with his new body and the experience of wounded war veterans.  I imagine Gregor's waking as a transformed creature to parallel the waking of a veteran after having lost a limb, for example.  The world would be entirely different...you would have to adapt to your new body.  Like Gregor, many veterans changed in more than physical ways after the war.  They, too, lost their appetites for what had once been their favorite foods, or could no longer bear the sight of their happy childhood belongings.  Shellshock and depression caused these effects in veterans just as Gregor's transformation triggers them in him. They may have felt the same burden of needing to care/provide for their family yet being unable to.  Some may have no longer been able to communicate with them.  Their wounds may have caused others to view them as monsters. Considering Gregor's struggle in adjusting to his body to be that of a veteran makes Metamorphosis a poignant examination of the after-effects of war wounds on both the men who have suffered them and their families.

When reading "The Metamorphosis," I find myself somewhat at a loss when trying to find a link between this text and WWI. The one concept that I do find coming to mind, however, is that of the lost generation. Gregor, due to his transformation, is completely lost to his family. Ultimately, when Gregor dies the family quickly moves on and shifts their focus to the next generation, seen here in Gregor's younger sister, Grete. In this way, I find Gregor's transformation is symbollic of the alienation his generation felt.

Well, Kafka wasn't any better the second time around than he was back in high school.  Still, I found that The Metamorphosis was surprisingly brimming with thematic parallels to World War I literature.  The issue of lost youth and vitality is a huge one in the story, particularly highlighted in the dynamic between Gregor and his father.  Gregor finds himself unable to provide for the family, unable to step up and be the masculine figure of protection and care that he needs to be, and finds himself challenged in this by his father.  As Gregor declines, his father grows stronger; this echoes the confusion in much of the war literature we have read thus far, where the youth die young, fighting the battles of the lingering older generations. 

In addition ,the inability to communicate and function in everyday life was strongly evocative of the lives of PTSD victims, struggling to readjust.  Gregor has, in a sense, adapted to some unspoken stimulus, metamorphosing into an enormous bug, but this adaptation has distanced him from his family.  In the same way, a veteran would return with certain adaptations of behavior and thinking that would clash with the casual, mundane state of everyday life, causing miscommunications, frustration, and possibly violence. 

Stacked on top of all this is the strange obsession with Grete's growing nubility.  The almost incestuous vibe of the story was uncomfortable to read, but it almost seems to reflect the desperation of individuals of the Lost Generation to find and secure a mate.  Gregor's sister is not an ideal mate, yet in a sense she is the only one available to him, because she is the only one who understands him, feeds him, and treats him with some degree of compassion and human decency.  Gregor, however, is of course unable to pursue such a pairing anyways, like Jake from The Sun Also Rises, because he is physically impaired—in this case, a bug. 

I have always found The Metamorphosis deeply disturbing and uncomfortable to read, and while it was an interesting exercise to look at the story from a new angle, it remained a weirdly slimy experience, for lack of a better word to describe it.

This probably makes me a freak, but I absolutely loved The Metamorphasis, and though I can't say for sure that I know what it was about, I do have some ideas.

Gregor's transformation reminded me of the iminent change experienced by returning soldiers from WWI.  However, Kafka not only speaks of PTSD and insomnia, but also depression, anxiety, and social maladjustment.  What I find to be incredible is that the worst wounds Gregor suffers are at the hands of his own family, when his father threw an apple that lodged into his back.  Although Gregor's metamorphasis is itself excruciating, Gregor resentment is directed towards his family, who has no idea how to accomadate him.  Although his sister tries at first to be understanding and supportive, it is she who loses all patience with her brother.  His madness is transferred to his family, and this is what results in Gregor's demise.  This story is a fascinating "case study" about interpersonal relations following the war. Also, as a parallel to The Waste Land, Gregor dies, ruining any chance of procreation from the male of the household.  Instead, his sister must pursue this family responsibility.

I was really very moved by the story because I felt a connection to Gregor's experience.  I lived in Mexico for 19 months following high school, and much of what I saw during that time affected me when I returned to the United States.  Seeing daily poverty, violence, and chaos changed the person who I was, and I became unrecognizable to my family.  Like Gregor, I didn't leave my room for months, and when I did, negative consequences ensued. I may be reading too personally into the text, but it really did resonate with me. 

I believe that the author, Franz Kafka, wrote The Metamorphosis on his own feelings on self-hate, inadequacy and being manipulated by others around him. It is very obvious that there are traces of depression in this story; in-fact, the despair is very similar to that of soldiers from WWI. The feeling of not being able to amount to anything in life is an emotion which is shared by every single person who has ever lived; during the Great War, this isolation is seen by all veterans (including women). The Isolation which Gregor is feeling is very similar to the PTSD after the war, and like many veterans, Gregor is unable to return to his normal life. The constant fatigue and need to sleep is a huge sign of depression, this is also a factor keeping Gregor from returning to life. Even the food which he once loved, has now turned distasteful and dull. His sister, who is the only one who shows her sympathy will eventually be tired of him, and come to think him a burden.

 Again, this is a scenario which was very common after the war. All of these points of depression, dissatisfaction with life, and a burgeoning sense of isolation for family and friends were symptoms of most people after the Great War, espescially Europeans. Gregor embodies all of these symptoms with his bleak outcome to his own fate. Kafka’s works as well as many others were able to accurately depict the depression of those after any war.

While it was difficult to find any links between Kafka's The Metamorphosis and WWI, I thought that Gregor would have related very well to some of the characters in the texts we've read so far this semester. Like the "lost" characters in The Sun Also Rises, he goes through a life-changing experience, all the while totally unprepared for changes he must overcome and essentially loses the ability to function. It is interesting to look at Gregor's physical transformation in comparison to the emotional transformations that characters like Vera, Jake, Brett, etc. go through in the aftermath of the War. The aspect of Gregor's metamorphosis that I find so interesting is the fact that it happens overnight and is never explained or even really questioned by Gregor himself; he just goes on living life as if it is his burden to bear. I see his physical burden as a parallel to the emotional turmoil caused by PTSD-- the sufferers cannot seem to make sense of what has happened to them but are forced to live with a new reality. In my mind, the senseless and injustice of Gregor's transformation has a clear connection to the injustice and chaos of the War.

Knowing that Kafka was a German speaking Jew born in Prague - then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire gave me the idea that perhaps the transformation of Gregor Samsa was an illustration of Kafka's sense of his difference from non-Jews at the time. To be a Jew during the time of WWI was to feel the wrath of society because Jews were to blame for every political, social and economic problem.  His difference is something about which nothing can be done.  He feels guilt, aloneness, alienation from others.  It is arbitrary how one is formed and into what kind of family one finds oneself.  There is no explanation why Gregor deserved such a fate and it's acceptance is something seen as quite natural.  He nor his family sought medical help or any other.  They all just accepted this horrible insect as their son/brother without bothering to find a remedy.  Interestingly Gregor soon finds himself more comfortable cramped up under his bed in a tight dark space.  He is hiding out from abuse.  He withdraws completely from society because he feels hopeless and has no connection to anyone. Even his sister who cared for him at the beginning is repelled by him now and wants him out of the way.  Gregor's physical life shapes and directs his mental life, just as the wounded soldier Jake Barnes' physical injury impacted his mental state and how he related to women especially.  The physical body cannot ignore what constrains it even if it tries mentally.The metamorphosis of a man into a spider- like monster is an extension of the alienation Gregor already felt as a person.

My first impression after reading Metamorphosis was that Gregor's transformation into a vermin was somehow a metaphor for a soldier coming home and dealing with post traumatic stress.  It is mentioned that Gregor was a soldier, and now in a job he does not like as a travelling salesman, and the first lines mention that he woke "from troubled dreams."  He turns into an entirely different being from what he was when he went to sleep, and his family does not know how what to do about his new state of being.  At first, his parents shun him while his sister tries to take care of him, but when it becomes apparent that he will not be turning back to the human he once was, even her nerves begin to fray.  The story culminates with Gregor's family members deciding that his presence is ruining them because he cannot understand them and they cannot communicate with him (though if they had tried, they would know this is not so), and that he must go.

We are presented this story from the perspective of Gregor, who had no control over his transformation, and no way to change back.  He is aware of his surroundings and understands what his family says, though they cannot understand him.  He becomes cut off from them and nobody knows how to fix it.  It just made me think of someone who comes home after experiencing things their family cannot imagine and being cut off from them, unable to explain what is going on in their head anymore, leading to family tension and pain.