Transcript Franz Kafka & The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka
&
The Metamorphosis
STUDIES IN ALIENATION
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Kafka on books…
“I think we ought to read only the kind of
books that wound and stab us…We need
the books that affect us like a disaster,
that grieve us deeply, like the death of
someone we loved more than ourselves,
like being banished into forests far from
everyone, like a suicide…A book must be
the axe for the frozen sea inside of us.”
— Franz Kafka
Kafka and His Work

Kafka attended German-speaking schools in Prague.

Kafka excelled in school and eventually earned a law
degree.

Kafka worked in various insurance companies
throughout his life and hated his line of business.

He considered his work to be his “Brotberuf,” or his
“breadwork.”

He devoted much of his free time to his writing.
Kafka and His Father
 Kafka’s
father, Hermann Kafka, was known
as a “huge, selfish, overbearing
businessman.”
 Kafka
was, throughout his life, frail, sickly,
and weak.
 He
was profoundly affected by his father’s
overbearing nature, and this came up
frequently in his writing.
Kafka and Judaism
 Kafka
was part of the German-speaking
Jewish minority living in Prague.
Thus,
he experienced alienation from the
larger society in Prague.
 Kafka
was not particularly religious,
but showed a great interest in Jewish
culture.
Kafka’s Personal Life
 His
inhibitions and insecurities plagued his
relationships. Twice he was engaged to marry
his girlfriend, Felice Bauer, before the two fina
 Later,
Kafka later fell in love with Dora
Dymant (Diamant), who shared his Jewish
roots and a preference for socialism. Amidst
Kafka's increasingly dire health, the two fell in
love and lived together in Berlin.
Kafka’s Personal Life

Their relationship revolved around Kafka's illnesses.
For many years, even before he contracted
tuberculosis, Kafka had not been well. Constantly
strained and stressed, he suffered from migraines,
boils, depression, anxiety and insomnia.

Kafka and Dora eventually returned to Prague. In an
attempt to overcome his tuberculosis, Kafka traveled
to Vienna for treatment at a sanatorium. He died in
Kierling, Austria, on June 3, 1924. He was buried
beside his parents in Prague's New Jewish Cemetery in
Olsanske.
Kafka and Judaism
 From
Kafka himself: “What have I in
common with Jews? I have hardly anything
in common with myself, and should stand
very quietly in a corner, content that I can
breathe.”
 Although Kafka
and his parents died
beforehand, his three sisters and their
families were killed in the Holocaust.
Kafka’s Writings
 Kafka
was not well-known during his
lifetime. The Metamorphosis is one of the
only major works that was published while
he was alive.
 Kafka instructed his friend Max Brod to
burn all of his unpublished writings upon
Kafka’s death.
 Brod ignored Kafka’s wishes and edited and
published Kafka’s collected works.
Kafka’s Writings

After Brod’s death, he left Kafka’s writings and his
own journals to his secretary, Esther Hoffe. She sold
the manuscript for Kafka’s novel, The Trial, for 2
million dollars.

In 2012, an Israeli court ordered that this privately
owned portfolio of manuscripts be handed over to the
National Library of Israel. The judge remarked that
the writings provide “a window into the lives, desires,
frustrations and the souls of two of the greatest
thinkers of the 20th century.”
“Kafkaesque”

From Merriam-Webster:
“of, relating to, or suggestive of Franz
Kafka or his writings; especially :
having a nightmarishly complex,
bizarre, or illogical quality”
For an example, see virtually anything Kafka
has written…