Fluent Essays

Select one of the two shorter novellas you did not write about in Discussion 9 and its attendant critical analyses, and perform one of the following activities upon them:C. For The Metamorphosis, do you find any parallels between Gregor Samsa and Franz Kafka himself in the conversation with Kafka recorded by Gustav Janouch?I attached The Metamorphosis and Gustav Janouch recorded conv. gustav_janouch.docx the_metamorphosis.docx Unformatted Attachment Preview Gustav Janouch Gustav Janouch published his recollections of Franz Kafka in Conversations with Kafka (1953). Janouch’s father was employed by the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute with Kafka, and he introduced his son to Kafka in 1920 because they were both “scribblers.” Janouch was only seventeen at the time, and very impressionable. Having read “The Metamorphosis,” he was disappointed by his first sight of Kafka: “ ‘So this is the creator of the mysterious bug, Samsa,’ I said to myself, disillusioned to see before me a simple, well-mannered man.” But when their conversation was over that day — after Kafka had told Janouch that he wrote at night because daytime was a “great enchantment . . . it distracts from the darkness within” — Janouch asked himself, “Is he not himself the unfortunate bug in ‘The Metamorphosis’?” Their acquaintance ripened into a friendship, which lasted until Kafka’s death in 1924. Kafka’s View of “The Metamorphosis” 1953 / Translated by Goronwy Rees I spent my first week’s wages on having Kafka’s three stories — The Metamorphosis, The Judgement, and The Stoker — bound in a dark brown leather volume, with the name Franz Kafka elegantly tooled in gold lettering. The book lay in the brief-case on my knee as I told Kafka about the warehouse-cinema. [Janouch was a pianist at the cinema.] Then I proudly took the volume out of the case and gave it across the desk to Kafka. “What is this?” he asked in astonishment. “It’s my first week’s wages.” “Isn’t that a waste?” Kafka’s eyelids fluttered. His lips were sharply drawn in. For a few seconds he contemplated the name in the gold lettering, hastily thumbed through the pages of the book and — with obvious embarrassment — placed it before me on the desk. I was about to ask why the book offended him, when he began to cough. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, held it to his mouth, replaced it when the attack was over, stood up and went to the small washstand behind his desk and washed his hands, then said as he dried them: “You overrate me. Your trust oppresses me.” He sat himself at his desk and said, with his hands to his temples: “I am no burning bush. I am not a flame.” I interrupted him. “You shouldn’t say that. It’s not just. To me, for example, you are fire, warmth, and light.” “No, no!” he contradicted me, shaking his head. “You are wrong. My scribbling does not deserve a leather binding. It’s only my own personal spectre of horror. It oughtn’t to be printed at all. It should be burned and destroyed. It is without meaning.” I became furious. “Who told you that?” I was forced to contradict him — “How can you say such a thing? Can you see into the future? What you are saying to me is entirely your subjective feeling. Perhaps your scribbling, as you call it, will tomorrow represent a significant voice in the world. Who can tell today?” I drew a deep breath. Kafka stared at the desk. At the corners of his mouth were two short, sharp lines of shadow. I was ashamed of my outburst, so I said quietly, in a low, explanatory tone: “Do you remember what you said to me about the Picasso exhibition?” Kafka looked at me without understanding. I continued: “You said that art is a mirror which — like a clock running fast — foretells the future. Perhaps your writing is, in today’s Cinema of the Blind, only a mirror of tomorrow.” “Please, don’t go on,” said Kafka fretfully, and covered his eyes with both hands. I apologized. “Please forgive me, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m stupid.” “No, no — you’re not that!” Without removing his hands, he rocked his whole body to and fro. “You are right. You are certainly right. Probably that’s why I can’t finish anything. I am afraid of the truth. But can one do otherwise?” He took his hands away from his eyes, placed his clenched fists on the table, and said in a low, suppressed voice: “One must be silent, if one can’t give any help. No one, through his own lack of hope, should make the condition of the patient worse. For that reason, all my scribbling is to be destroyed. I am no light. I have merely lost my way among my own thorns. I’m a dead end.” Kafka leaned backwards. His hands slipped lifelessly from the table. He closed his eyes. “I don’t believe it,” I said with utter conviction, yet added appeasingly: “And even if it were true, it would be worthwhile to display the dead end to people.” Kafka merely shook his head slowly. “No, no . . . I am weak and tired.” “You should give up your work here,” I said gently, to relax the tension which I felt between us. Kafka nodded. “Yes, I should. I wanted to creep away behind this office desk, but it only increased my weakness. It’s become — ,” Kafka looked at me with an indescribably painful smile, “ — a cinema of the blind.” Then he closed his eyes again. I was glad at this moment there was a knock on the door behind me. The Metamorphosis 1915 / Translated by Ann Charters I As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect. He was lying on his hard, armor-plated back, and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into bow-shaped ridges, on top of which the precariously perched bed quilt was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, pitiably thin compared to the rest of him, fluttered helplessly before his eyes. “What has happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream. His room — a normal, though rather small, human bedroom — lay quiet within its four familiar walls. Above the table, where a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and laid out — Samsa was a traveling salesman — hung the picture that he had recently cut from an illustrated magazine and put in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady wearing a small fur hat and a fur stole, sitting upright, holding out to the viewer a heavy fur muff into which her entire forearm had vanished. Then Gregor looked toward the window, and the dreary weather — he heard the rain falling on the metal ledge of the window — made him feel quite melancholy. “What if I went back to sleep again for awhile and forgot about all this nonsense?” he thought, but it was absolutely impossible, since he was used to sleeping on his right side, and he was unable to get into that position in his present state. No matter how hard he tried to heave himself over onto his right side, he always rocked onto his back again. He tried a hundred times, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at his wriggly legs, and he didn’t give up until he began to feel a faint, dull ache in his side that he had never felt before. “Oh God,” he thought, “what a hard job I picked for myself! Traveling day in and day out. Much more stressful than working in the home office; on top of that, the strain of traveling, the worry about making connections, the bad meals at all hours, meeting new people, no real human contact, no one who ever becomes a friend. The devil take it all!” He felt a slight itch on top of his belly; slowly he pushed himself on his back closer to the bedpost, so he could lift his head better; he found the itchy place, which was covered with little white spots he couldn’t identify; he tried to touch the place with one of his legs, but he immediately drew it back, for the contact sent icy shudders through his entire body. He slid back to his former position. “Getting up so early like this,” he thought, “makes you quite stupid. A man has to have his sleep. Other traveling salesmen live like women in a harem. For instance, when I return to the hotel during the morning to write up my orders, I find these gentlemen just sitting down to breakfast. I should try that with my boss; I would be fired on the spot. Anyway, who knows if that wouldn’t be a good thing for me after all. If it weren’t for my parents, I would have quit long ago, I would have gone to the boss and told him off. That would knock him off his desk! It’s a strange thing, too, the way he sits on top of his desk and talks down to his employees from this height, especially since he’s hard of hearing and we have to come so close to him. Now, I haven’t totally given up hope; as soon as I’ve saved the money to pay back what my parents owe him — that should take another five or six years — I’ll certainly do it. Then I’ll take the big step. Right now, though, I have to get up, because my train leaves at five.” He looked over at the alarm clock, which was ticking on the chest of drawers. “Heavenly Father,” he thought. It was half past six, and the hands of the clock were quietly moving forward; in fact, it was after half past, it was nearly quarter to seven. Was it possible the alarm hadn’t rung? He saw from the bed that it was correctly set at four o’clock; surely it had rung. Yes, but was it possible to sleep peacefully right through that furniture-rattling noise? Well, he hadn’t exactly slept peacefully, but probably all the more soundly. What should he do now? The next train left at seven o’clock; to catch it, he would have to rush like mad, and his samples weren’t even packed yet, and he definitely didn’t feel particularly fresh and rested. And even if he did catch the train, he wouldn’t escape a scene with his boss, since the firm’s office boy would have been waiting at the five o’clock train and would have reported back to the office long ago that he hadn’t turned up. The office boy was the boss’s own creature, without backbone or brains. Now, what if he called in sick? But that would be embarrassing, and it would look suspicious, because in the five years he’d been with the company, he’d never been sick before. His boss would be sure to show up with the doctor from the Health Insurance; he’d reproach his parents for their son’s laziness, and he’d cut short any excuses by repeating the doctor’s argument that people don’t get sick, they’re just lazy. And in this case, would he be so wrong? The fact was that except for being drowsy, which was certainly unnecessary after his long sleep, Gregor felt quite well, and he was even hungrier than usual. As he was hurriedly turning all these thoughts over in his mind, still not able to decide to get out of bed — the alarm clock was just striking a quarter to seven — he heard a cautious tap on the door, close by the head of his bed. “Gregor” — someone called — it was his mother — “it’s a quarter to seven. Didn’t you want to leave?” That gentle voice! Gregor was shocked when he heard his own voice reply; it was unmistakably his old familiar voice, but mixed with it could be heard an irrepressible undertone of painful squeaking, which left the words clear for only a moment, immediately distorting their sound so that you didn’t know if you had really heard them right. Gregor would have liked to answer fully and explain everything, but under the circumstances, he contented himself by saying, “Yes, yes, thank you, mother. I’m just getting up.” No doubt the wooden door between them must have kept her from noticing the change in Gregor’s voice, for his mother was reassured with his announcement and shuffled off. But because of this brief conversation, the other family members had become aware that Gregor unexpectedly was still at home, and soon his father began knocking on a side door softly, but with his fist. “Gregor, Gregor,” he called, “what’s the matter with you?” And after a little while, in a deeper, warning tone, “Gregor! Gregor!” At the other side door, his sister was asking plaintively, “Gregor, aren’t you feeling well? Do you need anything?” To both sides of the room, Gregor answered, “I’m getting ready,” and he forced himself to pronounce each syllable carefully and to separate his words by inserting long pauses, so his voice sounded normal. His father went back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered, “Gregor, open the door, please do.” But Gregor had no intention of opening the door, and he congratulated himself on having developed the prudent habit during his travels of always locking all doors during the night, even at home. As a start, he would get up quietly and undisturbed, get dressed, and — what was most important — eat breakfast, and then he would consider what to do next, since he realized that he would never come to a sensible conclusion about the situation if he stayed in bed. He remembered how many times before, perhaps when he was lying in bed in an unusual position, he had felt slight pains that turned out to be imaginary when he got up, and he was looking forward to finding out how this morning’s fantasy would fade away. As for the change in his voice, he didn’t doubt at all that it was nothing more than the first warning of a serious cold, a traveling salesman’s occupational hazard. It was easy to push off the quilt; all he had to do was to take a deep breath and it fell off by itself. But things got difficult with the next step, especially since he was now much broader. He could have used hands and arms to prop himself up, but all he had were his numerous little legs that never stopped moving in all directions and that he couldn’t control at all. Whenever he tried to bend one of his legs, that was the first one to straighten itself out; and when it was finally doing what he wanted it to do, then all the other legs waved uncontrollably, in very painful agitation. “There’s simply no use staying idle in bed,” said Gregor to himself. The first thing he meant to do was get the lower part of his body out of bed, but this lower part, which he still hadn’t seen, and couldn’t imagine either, proved to be too difficult to move, it shifted so slowly; and when finally, growing almost frantic, he gathered his strength and lurched forward, he miscalculated the direction, and banged himself violently into the bottom bedpost, and from the burning pain he felt, he realized that for the moment, it was the lower part of his body that was the most sensitive. Next he tried to get the upper part of his body out first, and cautiously brought his head to the edge of the bed. This he managed easily, and eventually the rest of his body, despite its width and weight, slowly followed the direction of his head. But when he finally had moved his head off the bed into open space, he became afraid of continuing any further, because if he were to fall in this position, it would be a miracle if he didn’t injure his head. And no matter what happened, he must not lose consciousness just now; he would be better off staying in bed. But when he repeated his efforts and, sighing, found himself stretched out just as before, and again he saw his little legs struggling if possible even more wildly than ever, despairing of finding a way to bring discipline and order to this random movement, he once again realized that it was impossible to stay in bed, and that the wisest course was to make every sacrifice, if there was even the slightest hope of freeing himself from the bed. But at the same time, he continued to remind himself that it was always better to think calmly and coolly than make desperate decisions. In such stressful moments he usually turned his eyes toward the window, but unfortunately the view of the morning fog didn’t inspire confidence or comfort; it was so thick that it obscured the other side of the narrow street. “Already seven o’clock,” he said as the alarm clock rang again, “already seven o’clock and still such a heavy fog.” And for a little while longer he lay quietly, breathing very gently as if expecting perhaps that the silence would restore real and normal circumstances. But then he told himself, “Before it reaches quarter past seven, I must absolutely be out of bed without fail. Besides, by then someone from the office will be sent here to ask about me, since it opens at seven.” And he began to rock the entire length of his body in a steady rhythm to swing it out of bed. If he maneuvered out of bed in this way, then his head, which he intended to lift up as he fell, would presumably escape injury. His back seemed to be hard; it wouldn’t be harmed if he fell on the carpet. His biggest worry was the loud crash he was bound to make, which would certainly cause anxiety, perhaps even alarm, behind all the doors. Still, he had to take the risk. When Gregor was already jutting halfway out of bed — his new approach was more a game than an exertion, for all he needed was to seesaw himself on his back — it occurred to him how easy his task would become if only he had help. Two strong people — he thought of his father and the maid — would have been enough; all they had to do was to slide their arms under his round back, lift him out of bed, bend down with their burden, and then wait patiently while he swung himself onto the ground, where he hoped that his little legs would find some purpose. Well, quite aside from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really have called for help? Despite his misery, he couldn’t help smiling at the very thought of it. By now he had pushed himself so far off the bed with his steady rocking that he could feel himself losing his balance, and he would finally have to decide what he was going to do, because in five minutes it would be quarter after seven — when the front doorbell rang. “That’s somebody from the office,” he said to himself, and his body became rigid, while his little legs danced in the air even faster. For a moment everything was quiet. “They won’t open the door,” Gregor told himself, with a surge of irrational hope. But then, as usual, the maid walked to the door with her firm step and opened it. Gregor needed only to hear the first words of greeting from the visitor to know who it was — the office manager himself. Why on earth was Gregor condemned to work for a company where the slightest sign of negligence was seized upon with the gravest suspicion? Were the employees, without exception, all scoundrels? Was no one among them a loyal and dedicated man, who, if he did happen to miss a few hours of work one morning, might drive himself so crazy with remorse that he couldn’t get out of bed? Wouldn’t it have been enough to send an apprentice to inquire — if inquiries were really necessary — did the manager himself have to come, and make it clear to the whole innocent family that any investigation into this suspicious matter could only be entrusted to a manager? And responding to these irritating thoughts more than to any conscious decision, Gregor swung himself out of bed with all his strength. There was a loud thud, but not really a crash. The carpet softened his fall, and his back was more resilient than Gregor had thought, so the resulting thud wasn’t so noticeable. Only he hadn’t held his head carefully enough and had banged it; he twisted it and rubbed it against the carpet in pain and annoyance. “Something fell in there,” said the manager in the adjoining room on the left. Gregor tried to imagine whether something similar to what had happened to him today might happen one day to the office manager; one really had to admit this possibility. But, as if in brusque reply, the manager took a few decisive steps in the next room, which made his patent leather boots creak. And in the adjoining room to the right, Gregor’s sister whispered, as if warning him, “Gregor, the office manager is here.” “I know,” said Gregor to himself; but he didn’t dare to raise his voice high enough so that his sister could hear. “Gregor,” said his father from the room to his left, “the office manager has come and wants to know why you didn’t catc ... Purchase answer to see full attachment