3:10-4:50

I chose this video because it explains Franz Kafka’s upbringing which was the influence behind all of his works. Most other videos I found only focused on summarizing and/or interpreting the story itself but I think that for Kafka’s stories, his family life played a critical part in the creation of his works. According to the video, Franz Kafka had an extremely psychologically abusive father and a spineless mother who could not stand up for her own child. The actions of his father left a negative impact on his mental health. Kafka’s father was the super controlling type of parent which usually has two different outcomes depending on the personality of the child — either the child will act out and rebel against the parent or the child will take everything in and bring themselves down. Kafka was of the latter personality type; he had basically zero sense of self-worth and self-esteem because he could only take in what his father did to him and resort to writing as an outlet to relieve stress. At age 36, he finally wrote out his feelings towards his father in a 47-page letter which did not even reach his father because his mother was a coward. He was a grown adult and still could not even deliver his feelings to his father. In the letter he said, “I was a mere nothing for him.” Because his father never showed him any affection, he really believed that his father hated him and thought he was worthless — only an extra mouth to feed and nothing good coming from it.

Later on in the video, the narrator explains The Metamorphosis and how it’s a story of self-hate. Gregor woke up one day as a bug which was how he felt others viewed him — a disgusting, useless bug. His father is abusive, of course, beating Gregor whenever he sees him. His mother can’t do anything but faint when she sees him. His sister is his only savior, for a bit, bringing him food scraps to eat. As the story progresses though, she eventually wants to kick him out as well.

“‘Listen’, said the chief clerk in the next room, ‘he’s turning the key.’ Gregor was greatly encouraged by this; but they all should have been calling to him, his father and his mother too: ‘Well done, Gregor’, they should have cried, ‘keep at it, keep hold of the lock!’”

I think this quote is really important because it showcases how Gregor just needed some encouragement from his parents to know that they supported him, but instead they treated him with a cynical curiosity. When Gregor finally dies, his family becomes happy rather than sad. It seems like everything is going well after he is gone which is ironic because he was the only person who was suffering working a job before he became a bug. He was content with dying in the end because he felt he really didn’t have any worth as a bug and had no hope of turning back into a human.

16:19-17:15

Again I have chosen a video by Nick Courtright, but for the reason that his explanations of the text are comprehensive. In the section of the video that I chose, Courtright talks about the short appendix at the end where the narrator mentions that Bartleby may have worked in the Dead Letter Office in Washington before working as a scrivener for the narrator. The Dead Letter Office was where all the letters that could not be delivered went, whether the receiver had passed away or could not be found. The name “Dead Letter Office” itself sounds very morbid; I don’t think I would be happy working in a place with a name like that — and then to be fired as well! In that sense, I think that we all understand Bartleby a little more and why he was so depressed and lost all will to live at the end when we learn of this rumor about him.

Courtright said that perhaps we are all dead letters. We are all going to end up in the same place in the end; so what is the point of life then? We are going nowhere, and Bartleby may have made this connection when he was working in the Dead Letter Office, seeing all those letters hit a dead end, never being able to go to where they were meant to go, messages going undelivered and unheard. Bartleby must have become so depressed and so unsatisfied with life. Although he was young, his job was of low status and there may have been little to no social/professional upward mobility. Even if he was able to move up in the world, what would he do when he got to a higher point? It seemed like Bartleby didn’t have any family or friends either, as he lived in the office and rarely went outside. What would he do with the extra money he made? There was no one to give it to or to spend it on. He couldn’t see a point in working or making a living or in capitalist society in general. Everyone else could not understand Bartleby because they were so used to having a job to make money to provide for themselves and, probably, a family, and they didn’t see any other way of living or maybe had never thought about why they were doing the things they were doing. The last sentence of the story, “On errands of life, these letters speed to death,” shows the irony of the dead letters, and perhaps why Bartleby doesn’t see a point in living. These letters had a message to deliver, full of life, but in the end they just died in the flames of the Dead Letter Office.