It is very difficult to interpret this story – even Kafka called it more a poem, than a story; he tried to give several interpretations himself, but finally agreed that all those interpretations weaken the implication of “The Judgment” itself. Actually, this work and “The Penal colony” were the only works, which Kafka wanted to see published.
. Still, let’s try to answer several questions based on my understanding of “The Judgment”.I. To what extent is Georg’s friend, who lives in Saint Petersburg, a projection of Georg’s self?Through the whole story Georg’s friend comes out as a strong connection between father and a son, as a strong link between them.
We don’t know the circumstances, which were the reason that friend left for Russia – only an explanation that he didn’t like how his business is going on here, in his fatherland. To some extent, this story is a kind of autobiographic; it shows deepness of relations between Kafka himself and his father, although it wasn’t so dramatic and violent.From one side, there is no connection between Georg and his friend, but from the other, we can find something common between them. While reading the story, we see that friend worked for nothing in the country, where he didn’t know anybody; moreover, he didn’t even want to get acquainted with somebody. He didn’t support any relations with Russian society as well as with Germans, which lived in Russia.
Georg also lead very secluded life: we can see from the story that his usual everyday program was home-work-home; in the evenings he was sitting with his father in the same room, although doing different things and reading different papers, but his way of life also can be called secluded. This schedule was violated only by non-frequent meetings with his friends and, recently, with his fiancée.Georg was a reserved man and he didn’t tell to his friend about his actual way of life, about his business and other important things, which were happening to him. Georg explained this by reason that his friend doesn’t have good business and good relations with women, so information about lucky events in Georg’s life can spoil his friend’s mood, and which is more important, his attitude to him, to Georg. But, as far as we see from the text, his friend also didn’t tell him anything.
Friend knows everything about Georg (Georg’s father writes to him accurately, describing all events, which are happening in Georg’s life), but at the same time he pretends he knows only those things, Georg writes to him – nothing else. At the same time they are two men, who feel both alone in this world. He transfers his feeling to his friend’s life; he exclaims to his fiancée: Alone? Do you know, what it means…to be alone! The loneliness, remoteness from the environment, from family, human relations… this is the thing, which unites two friends.II. Even though George is very successful at his father’s business and has assumed the leadership position, displacing his father, why does his business career begin only after the death of his mother, why does he kill himself after his father condemns him to death, and why does he not even once think of his fiancée as he runs out of the house, away from the wrathful father, and finally drops into the river?I suppose that we can call Georg a Kafka himself.
The father was a strong, authoritative personality, who always acted as he wanted and never take into considerations any other arguments and opinions. He was strict and powerful, a personification of home tyranny. He didn’t understand his son, and his belief in his own force didn’t have any bounds. After the death of his wife, he became more restrained and allowed his son, Georg, to assume a leadership position in business. From that moment Georg starts his successful business career and his father doesn’t thrust his opinion in such great extent anymore.
But still, his influence on son is incredible.As far as father becomes less and less powerful (partially because of his age he looses influence), Georg makes everything possible to isolate his father from business as well. Actually, we can call this work (as well as all Kafka’s works) “A temptation to escape from father’s influence”. This escape is more probably the unsuccessful attempt to escape – an attempt which is condemned to collapse. We can find confirmation to all this, reading the end of the story, where Georg comes to his father to announce him that Georg wrote a letter to his friend in St. Petersburg where he tells about his engagement and all other news.
His father, whom Georg considers as a weak, elderly person, suddenly changes into a strong powerful colossus, whom he been before mother’s death.This changing strikes Georg so much, that he feels helpless and thunderstruck. Death in understanding of Kafka in his story took the meaning of highest felicity, a seventh heaven of strict obedience to his father’s will – the last chance to prove that his father’s will was above all; the voluntarily condemnation was continuation of lost sense of proportion, which caused this condemnation; but it suppressed anxiety, finally granting to his father love and respect. Georg didn’t have any way to show the deepest respect and to refuse consciously from expression of such respect. This is a price of autocracy; Georg doesn’t think about his fiancée as he runs out of the house, because she cannot intervene in blood relations between father and the son; he simply doesn’t remember about her existence; he carries out an order, a judgment of his father and his last words are that he loves his parents greatly.
III. Using inferential reasoning, build a thesis about Georg’s early relationship with hismother, and then defend this thesis logically, drawing upon direct and indirect evidencesThe role of Georg’s mother and her early relations with Georg: Drawing a parallel between Kafka and Georg, where mother is an embodiment of natural tenderness and defense from his strict powerful father.As far as we can make a parallel between Georg and Kafka himself, we can see that Georg’s mother probably has much in common with Kafka’s mother as well. I tried to reconstruct image of women, which also influenced life and creative works of Kafka, but it seems that she didn’t play important role in the Kafka’s family and we don’t have enough information about her.
Really, his father was a bright personality, although not so sympathetic; in his family life he showed himself as typical tyrant and his wife all the life depended on him, resignedly helping him in his business. She didn’t have courage to protect her son and tried, taking an opportunity when the father was absent, to caress her son. We know that even kissing her son before he goes to sleep, she had to do it stealthily, hiding from her husband this expression of mother’s love.I suppose that Georg’s mother didn’t play important role in Georg’s family as well; as far we can see from the story, there is no mentioning about her, except of several lines about her death.
Probably, she also was the only person, who could protect a young Georg from his powerful father. I think also, that because of difficult relation in that family, where we cannot say that Georg was deprived of mother’s love, at the same time he didn’t have it to a necessary extent. I think that Georg, being humbled by his father authority, by fear (probably, his mother also felt this fear regarding her husband), didn’t trust this love, and rejected it as a compromise, as internal cowardice and weakness from mother’s side in opposition to his strong father, whose opinion was considered as primary in their family.IV. Describe Gregor’s reactions, and that of his parents and the chief clerk, to hismetamorphosis.Gregor wakes up.
He is alone. He already transformed into a strange insect, but his human impressions are still mixing with new instincts of insect. He understands that he missed the train, and suddenly grasps that his manager will come to his house to check whether he is ill or not. He wants to stand up from his bed but realizes that something bothers him and his body doesn’t want to obey him. First of all he thinks that all his feelings are play of imagination- in such a way you can sleep in a pose which is not comfortable and while you wake up, you still feel some inconvenience, which passes, when you stand up from the bed – you need only to open the blanket. But when he opens the blanket and uncovers himself, he understands to his horror, that he IS that insect and he is horrified not only by fact of his metamorphose, but also with fact that he is hopelessly late for his work.
From the beginning of story we can see that although he experiences such metamorphose, he continues to life his usual life, and finds courage to think, whether the same thing can happen with his manager, or thinks about reaction of his parents, about his necessary presence at work, etc. He still has hope, that all what happened to him is his nightmare, which will finish soon.His parents are also horrified by strange changes which happened to him. The reaction was astonishing. His mother first had a look at the father, then after made two steps toward Gregor and lost consciousness, falling into the ground; the chief clerk, as he was the first staying to the door, pressed his palm to the mouth and shouted … he moved back very slowly, as if some invisible force made him to move, and then after rushed away from the room. The father threateningly clenched his fist, as if he wanted to push Gregor back to his room, than he hesitatingly looked at the sitting-rood, closed his eyes with hands and cried.
They are horrified with his voice of animal and look of huge insect. After that his father with help of a stick forced Gregor to move to his room, and closed the door.V. Describe Georg’s alienation from his family and his former lifeAfter awful metamorphose in Gregor’s life, his parents close him in his room and in such way isolate him. From his whole family only sister Greta overcame her fears and aversion, entered his room, cleaned it up and brought him food. Gregor was in complete isolation from his family – this describes his alienation from them and his former life.
The family, meanwhile, build their own plans for the future, where were no place for Gregor. As far as Gregor was the only source of income, sister, mother and father had to work now.Gregor completely changed his habits and way of life. The only pleasure he had was to climb the walls and ceiling.
Sister and mother decided to remove the furniture from his room for his convenience. But Gregor was afraid that they will take away everything he had, and hang at the portrait. Mother saw the brown spot at the wall and scared. Gregor wanted to help, but his desire took a turn against him. Soon father came back and punished him severely.
Although Gregor was a member of family, his relatives didn’t want to take care of him. He was completely alone. He felt his alienation and was indifferent to everything: to the meals and to his appearance. The only thing he liked was music. Once Greta was playing the violin for lodgers; Gregor heard the music and entered the living-room.
One of lodgers saw him and started scandal. Now Greta didn’t bear it: she burst into tears and shouted that they cannot live like that anymore – they have to get rid of such a terrible creature. By her words, this wasn’t Gregor anymore: Gregor could understand it long time ago and to disappear. Poor Gregor thinks about her words, about his love to family, understands that Greta is right and dies in the morning.
Gregor, as any other person, is alone. The reasons of such alienation are different: lack of understanding, disability to sympathize and suffer, to stick up for oneself, stipulated with false feeling of guilt in relation to other people. A person, who is deeply involved into everyday troubles, often doesn’t notice people, who surround him, sometimes he doesn’t estimate things he has and doesn’t want to change something in his life. He acts in correspondence with paradox truths, which rule in society, and in results to supply his family with material goods, looses himself as a personality. We cannot live, completely subordinated to interests of other people – the confirmation of this position is story “Metamorphose” – a hint at inevitability of alienation of person in conditions of real world.
VI. Analyze Georg’s relationship to his parents from an oedipal point of viewActually, all the works of Kafka have the same motive: a strong, strict father as powerful merciless and implacable personality and other members of family, which cannot do nothing, but agree with him. They life his life, looking for words of recognition and approval from the side of such authoritarian person. “The Metamorphose” is not exception as well.Analyzing Georg’s relations with his parents from oedipal point of view, we can see that father embodies inevitable strict law, and everybody should obey his will. The feeling Georg experiences in his family is feeling that he is forgotten by everybody and has to protect himself desperately; at the same time he doesn’t make any attempt to protect himself from such despotism – he obeys his fate and all he has is to suffer in his heart of hearts.
His family simply used him – they didn’t take into account that he was a man with his own life and beliefs. His father was a strict man and profit for him was limited by values of immediate actions – the father considered the aim to be the thing, which is above all- even above life- it is a principle, which is common to a lot of grown-up people. Although Georg made his work day by day, he felt that he was isolated from society, which exploited him, but didn’t attach any significance to it until he turned into a horrible insect.All relatives responded to Georg by lack of understanding. He suffered from alienation, from misunderstanding.
Everything he perceived in such a way, as if his nerves were naked. Image of father determined everything in his life.This Oedipal struggle is everywhere- in any of his stories. The young man is a terrible mixture of neurosis and permanent stresses – all this took place in Kafka’s real life. All his life, actually, was built in such a way to show that he can oppress his father’s influence, but in vain.VII.
How do paradigms of the slave-and-master and the Oedipal conflict intertwine in “The Metamorphosis”?All isolation, alienation, diffidence are consequences of relations with his father. But also important reason for his position was demand from environment motherly attitude. The more his father distinguished himself as expansive strong person, the more Georg wanted to find somebody who would be able to give all he wanted. Suffering and outcast was combined with torments of painfully lonesome person.
The isolation helps to look at you from aside, but each attempt of such isolation only underlines egocentrism. It seems, you are cut into halves – like Georg in “The Metamorphose” – one part is a man, another part is an insect.Slave-n-Master paradigm is clearly seen in this story – actually, Georg is a slave – he is isolated in his room by environment and at the same time he is isolated in his body by some horrible circumstances. The masters are all those, who surround him. Several days ago they were loving and beloved relatives, but while time is passing by, they turn into heartless creatures, which don’t care about Georg anymore. Moreover, they think about him as an unbearable burden, which bothers them every day more and more.
The sources of Kafka’s loneliness are in his family, in his childhood and youth age. He hates family hearth, but stays its prisoner, as prisoner of Prague. At the same time Gregor is a prisoner of his own family in a metaphorical sense as well as prisoner in a literal sense. Insularity, oedipal complex were the searches of misfortune. One of his features was definite inclination to self-destruction, which resulted in the story transformation into a horrible creature and death at the end.
He is weak at the face of his father and life, at the face of family surrounding, which was almost hateful for him. He was badly armed for struggle, - he was doomed for collapse and lived his completely understanding it. But, going through his hatred, he aspired to love. He hated his father and family, at the same time he loved them and didn’t want to be a burden, presenting his death as a form of self- disavowal, bordering with sacrifice – sacrifice of slave for master’s desire.
