World War I

From the first few lines I instantly think of a struggle to sleep or insomnia. Greegor struggles to go back to sleep and fights himself whether to go back to sleep. It brings me back to The Sun Also Rises, and Jake's struggle to sleep at night, all of the characters struggle with sleep but Jake's was more personal. Jake fights with himself to sleep or not to sleep. The struggle to sleep for many during this generation was something all too fimilar and a strong theme in The Sun Also Rises. The characters refused to sleep because many of them had nightmares that did not allow them to sleep. So because of that, the characters would struggle and fight with themselves to not go back to sleep because they did not want to relive those same dreams. Another thing that reminded me of The Sun Also Rises is the fact that Gregor cannot find true friendship because of his job, which was another strong theme in The Sun Also Rises. All of the characters interactions in The Sun Also Rises were not anything more than lets get drunk and enjoy ourselves. Their "friendships" were all surface types of friendships, there was nothing in depth about them or any real feelings to them.

The other book that I am reminded of is Testament of Youth. I am reminded of this because when Gregor wakes up in the beginning, he realizes he is not himself anymore. He has transformed and described himself as "a vermon." I am reminded of Britain and how she also viewed herself transformed. After all of the things she had seen during the war, she believed herself to be cold and changed. Each did not view themselves as what they had previously known.

This is my second time reading The Metamorphosis, but I had never considered the influence that the war might have had on it. The part of the story that I thought resembled our previous readings the most was the how Gregor  dealt with his situation with unsettling rationality. The completely calm  way that he responded to finding himself a vermin reminded me of Brittain and her experiences as a nurse. They both dealt with their situations-- violent war wounds in Brittain's case and transformation for Gregor-- with numbness and attempts to maintain a sense of normality. While Brittain coped with the unreality by  with mindless work that made her too tired to fully process her situation, Gregor responded by trying to sort out how he's going to get to work and explain the situation to his superiors. Neither of them react  with any sort of intense feeling to their situations which would normally be considered extremely emotionally upsetting.

Kafka discusses the concept of normality in an interesting way in "The Metamorphosis". The story seems to take place in an alternate reality, one in which people can turn into insects without warning, but also a world that is obviously, in every other way, our own everyday world. So the story is both real and not-real. I think this is a good working definition of surrealism which Kafka presents to the reader: a version of reality that is familiar from many perspectives but completely impossible from another perspective. This is revealed especially since the story is told mostly from Gregor's perspective. He has no real thoughts of injustice or wrongdoing; he does not blame anybody for turning him into an insect. Rather, he accepts it as an incontrovertible fact about his existence as he knows it.

I think this acceptance is what makes the story most relevant to the War. For one, there is a notable absence of any deity or original cause for his transformation. It is an effect without a considered cause, and this is also part of the surreal nature of the conflict. It seems like there is nothing to which this mysterious transformation can be ascribed, and all Gregor can do, realizing this, is continue on with his life in whatever way we can. To me this "metamorphosis" is analogous to the War itself and how it transformed the world and people's perception of it. It might have appeared to someone living in the aftermath of World War One that events as troubling as Gregor's change might occur at any moment. It represents a fundamental distrust of reality and political stability. Kafka seized on this incapacity for trust and created the Metamorphosis out of it.

One interesting aspect of Kafka's surrealism is how the mundane malaise of everyday existence takes precedence over the fantastical elements. The titular metamorphosis is not the focus of the story; rather, Kafka chooses to focus on the day-to-day life of Gregor's family as they struggle to cope with the consequences. The seeming irrelevence of the fantastic gives the entire story the dreamlike unreality characteristic of surrealism, an unreality which seem to imbue every scene and action in the story with symbolic significance. 

The connection between the Great War and the life of Gregor Samsa is made explicit in this passage, encountered soon after Gregor's transformation. "On the wall exactly opposite there was photograph of Gregor when he was a lieutenant in the army, his sword in his hand and a carefree smile on his face as he called forth respect for his uniform and bearing." This description of Gregor's military career hints at the past vitality or vigor that Gregor once possessed, which has been utterly drained from him in his current state. Gregor's physical metamorphosis is the final, inevitable stage of his existence as a traveling salesman: alone and isolated from the world, forced to scurry around in circles without any prospect of self improvement, Gregor's insignificant and mundane existance predetermined his coleopterous fate.

Although I had heard it mentioned many times before, I had never read Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis until this class. I cannot say I really understood it based on that first reading, beyond the basic story plot. There are lots of different arguments I might be able to make about why Kafka wrote it, or what he was intending, but at the same time I'm not sure that I feel particularly strongly about any of those arguments. As far as how it relates to WWI, I am not sure I can exactly say either. Because it was written in 1915, I do think Kafka would have been highly influenced in his writing by the war itself and by the attitudes of people during that time of crisis. Obviously the war was far from over at this time, so it was not written as a response to the war as a whole. I do think thematically and conceptually it does relate to other things written about WWI, and to the feelings people would have had at the time. Someone mentioned the absurdity of life in a post, and this was something that occurred to me as well as I read. There is obviously a real sense of absurdity in the story and in Gregor's fate. Why was he transformed into a "horrible vermin?" Kafka never gives us an answer. We are just given the facts that he was transformed, and that he lived a rather horrible and pointless life as a result of his change. In a way, this relates to the war. It was horrible, and to the people who were losing loved ones, it would seem rather pointless. It was absurd. The numbers of people dying, the ways in which it was being fought... these things were all absurd. Perhaps Kafka is commenting on this? Or if not intentionally making a comment, perhaps those kinds of emotions were working their way into his writing as a result of the sentiments of people at the time. I also think the feeling of helplessness in the face of extreme change is something that is very important. People at this time were faced with all kinds of changes, and felt a fair amount of helplessness. There was nothing anyone could do to stop the horrific events that were unfolding. Kafka's story presents this attitude as well. Neither Gregor or his family was able to do anything about his horrible change, and they all felt quite helpless. Although I don't know if these thematic or conceptual elements were purposefully placed in the story to relate to the war, I think they are present in the story as a result of the war and the attitudes of people at that time. 

When reading The Metamorphosis with World War I in mind, you quickly see multiple similar themes, such as the complete absurdity of both. In both, we see that normal people quickly adapt to extremely absurd situations. In most situations in life, people would not see a man being transformed into an insect as an average situation; however, in The Metamorphosis, the members of the family—and even Gregor himself – rapidly adapt to the situation. This is similar to the situation involving the war where average people would not normally be used to seeing thousands of men dead in a day, but after a short time on the front line, death and destruction almost become routine.

This is very closely related to an additional aspect affecting both: the containment of normal human emotions. This is represented in The Metamorphosis by the family as they build up in stress from working and resentment towards Gregor as he is allowed to live seemingly without stress. During the war, people also were forced to hold in their emotions for the “good of the country.” The emotional toll was often shown in the same way in both situations with an angry and emotion- filled release. At the end of The Metamorphosis, this culminated with the family joining together in the desire to rid themselves of Gregor. During the war, however, emotions culminated in different ways for different people: for soldier, it could come out as “shell shock” or other similar mental displays, and for the rest of the population, it came out resentment and anger towards the cause, the country, themselves or any number of other unrelated issues.    

Although The Metamorphosis never directly mentions anything relating to WWI, because the work was published during 1915 and carries many themes that were prominent at the time, it is not presumptuous to assume that Kafka intended for the work to carry some war-related subtext. While several of the primary themes of the story directly relate to popular WWI literary and philosophical topics, the most prominent correlation that I saw was a commentary on the absurdity of life. This directly relates to WWI because of the colossal loss of optimism that was caused by the events of the war. This loss directly influenced the writers and philosophers of the time and led to the creation of existentialism. Kafka, of course, was an existentialist and many of the authors we've read this semester were either involved in movements that were pre-cursors to existentialism or were founders of the movement.

The most blatant reference to this absurdity is seen in the opening statement of the story; One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams , he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. Kafka is informing the reader -- with his very first sentence -- of a highly improbable, wildly irrational, totally absurd event which suggests that the story is taking place in a nonsensical universe. This realization immediately taps into the existential notion of The Absurd and grounds the work in some of the major philosophical questions of the time. The absurdity continues throughout the entire novella with the fact that the story itself never questions or attempts to explain Gregor's transformation. It never implies that this happened as some sort of punishment for bad behavior or to balance out a universal wrong. Instead, by all accounts, Gregor is a very hard worker as well as a good brother and son. There is no evidence that Gregor deserves his fate and Gregor's entire family treats the event as a random occurrence rather than a singular impossibility.

All these events together give the story an overtone of absurdity and purposelessness. They allow the reader to get a sense that this universe operates without rhyme or reason and events occur based on pure randomness rather than any kind of overarching plan or unifying idea of justice. This is compounded by the reactions that various characters have to the transformation. Most of them do not seem surprised and instead react calmly and unquestioningly to the absurd event of Gregor transforming into an insect. The very nature of the story then causes their reactions -- or lack thereof -- to be seen as absurd, because it appears as though they fully expect insane things to happen and do not really question weird events anymore. This further compounds the ridiculous tone of The Metamorphosis and completely sets it in an existentialist world, where events as horrifying and traumatizing as WWI could no longer shock a desensitized public.

Many years ago I wrote a paper on Virginia Woolf and discussed her role as literary critic.  Today I dug up this paper out of an old box in the basement and read it.  To my surprise I found some interesting thoughts about Woolf that apply to our reading of  To the Lighthouse.  When I read the last phrase of the book in the voice of Lily saying to herself, "I have had my vision" I thought I understood her to mean that yes, she finally saw her painting as complete and she was pleased with her decade long effort.  She had managed to close the circle of her thoughts and apply them on canvas as a whole as she meant them to be remembered. But I was really amazed to see that something I had written about Woolf's criticism helped to explain to me why she wrote that last line.

I was struck by Wool's use of the word "vision" because I found this to be the exact word she used to describe as necessary in writing.  I wrote:  "Chief among her critical standards is this insistence upon wholeness, upon what she calls singleness of vision and effect in a work of art."  Later when discussing the novels of E.M Forster I wrote that Woolf declares, "if there is one gift more essential to a novelist than another it is the power of combination -- the single vision." Woolf, Essays I,p.345

Further,  that "Life escapes if not seized in a "moment of vision" that only occurs when the writer is able to cut through the daily mystification and see to the eternal."  This is why time did not matter to her. She is not concerned with description and temporal details.  Woolf felt it was the task of the writer to "catch and enclose certain moments which break off from the mass...to arrest those thoughts which suddenly are almost menacing with meaning.  Such moments of vision are of an unaccountable nature; leave them alone and they persist for years; try to explain them and they disapear; write them down and they die beneath the pen."  Woolf, Contemporary Writers,p75

I hadn't connected Lighthouse back then to my paper on Woolf as a literary critic and reading this now shows that she was practicing what she preached.  I am awed. So cool.

I think that the amount of time devoted to the events in "The Window" and in "Time Passes" is very interesting and significant to the narration of the story. Because Woolf employs free indirect discourse, the reader is able to gain a general sense of how all of the characters are feeling; they have insecurities and worries but they are generally content with their lives and the situations in which they find themselves. Woolf devotes a large portion of the novel to describing one single night in the lives of all of these characters in order to pinpoint the general consciousness of the group before the War. This can be seen as trying to parallel the general consciousness of English society before the War began.

In "Time Passes", however, little time or thought is given to the deaths of Mrs. Ramsey, Prue and Andrew. This symbolizes the beginning of the War, and the characters no longer have the privilege of deeply reflecting upon their experiences. They are no longer capable of the same introspection in the face of the chaos of the War and the deaths are therefore less important. The novel does not explore the meaning of the deaths nor does it provide any sort of resolution during this section. The section exemplifies the feeling of being completely lost, which is contrasted by the self-awareness of "The Window".

In the first section of To The Lighthouse Virginia Woolf has given an overview of the characters through indirect discourse. There is an emphasis and importance placed on this part of the story that does not necessarily blend as smoothly with Time Passes. In the second section of this story the importance is placed on the war itself and what the war does to this family. Mrs. Ramsey dies, Pru dies and Andrew dies. They all die very quickly and almost quietly. There is no importance to their deaths, it is just what happens during a time of war, people die. Just like the deaths of the family the vacation home dies as well. The war shows the affect on everyone and everything. The family cannot get back to the lighthouse because of the war. This story shows how the war destroyed so much just by giving the reader a glance at a family. 

When Mr. Ramsey returns to the lighthouse he is showing an attempt at repair. He and what is left of his family have to move on from the destruction of the war. They go back to what was once familiar and what they knew before the war came. The section Time Passes is exactly what the title of it means. It is so quick and time just passes over the war and the family telling the reader this is what the war was and what it has done to the world. The family must now try to be whole again and the house must be repaired to help bring some form of normalcy back to what is left.