There are many factors that influence an author and their work such as the time period they are living in as well as the experiences they had that shaped them. In The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, there are many parallels from the life of the fictional character Gregor Samsa, to Kafka's own personal life. Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883. He was born into a middle class Jewish household and grew up with feelings of inferiority, guilt, resentment, and confinement. This shows threw his work in the Metamorphosis in the main character Gregor. In the beginning Gregor works as a traveling salesman for a company that his father owed a large debt to and he is trying to pay it off.
[...] The way that Kafka writes The Metamorphosis however, they repeatedly find themselves “involved with Gregor and the Samsa's and the entire macrocosm in which they move.” (William A. Madden) This disproves the story as an allegory in a sense. At the time of Gregor's death, he has a calm and peaceful contemplation of his life. Nowhere else is this found in Kafka's writings; his recognition of the reality of his own condition. He has no expectations of receiving and comfort or reward for what he has gone threw in his life or even the last few months. [...]
[...] The first time is when he chases the head-clerk, the second is when he is trying to save his furniture in his room and the final time is when he is captivated by his sisters violin playing and one of the house guests spots him. He is confined to his room the entirety of the text, from when he wakes up the first day until he dies that night three months later. Almost every time he leaves his room, he is hurt by his father and retreats back to where he was. [...]
[...] His only way to convey his feelings to a read is by likening it to the transformation Gregor has undergone. Some might say the story is to fictional or may be called a fantasy because of its extreme storyline and events. At the very beginning of the short novel however, Kafka discounts this by giving vivid imagery about the contents of Gregor's room, exactly how a normal human room would be explained. Awakening as this vermin, this room that he was all too familiar with had not changed at all, was only rather to small”. [...]
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