“One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.”

The surreal idea of transferring human being into a bug seems to me so repellent. While trying to make a sense of it I will focus on the Gregor’s family reaction to it. I use the 4.00 to 7.06 minutes of the video.

The video itself shows animated summary  of the Kafka’s story. Which I really like because it helps me better imagine the story.

Metamorphosis by Kafka deals with absurd and irrational event of Gregor’s waking up to discover he has turned into a giant insect, and since it is physically impossible- it takes on supernatural significance.

Gregor behaves completely as a bug and hangs on the ceiling. His sister removed all the furniture from his room but their mother was not happy because that meant Gregor is not going to change again. However, his family do not turn back on him. Even the father, who shows the least sympathy of the family members toward Gregor and even attacks him twice, never suggests that they kill him or force him out of the house. Instead, he implicitly shows compassion for Gregor by allowing the family to care for him.

But in fact the change make significant psychological distance between Gregor and his family. He is completely separated from his family and humanity. He can’t communicate with his family. And rather kept lock in his room.

In my culture we often tend to say that if something bad happen to someone it means that he or she deserves his fate. However, there are no indicators that Gregor deserve to be punish. His family rather has good relations with him. On the contrary, he was a goos son and brother, taking a job he dislikes so that he can provide for them and planning to pay for his sister to study music at the conservatory. Therefore, they consider it as random event as any other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I would prefer not to.”

“Bartleby the Scrivener” is one of Melville’s most famous stories. The story is about the Lawyer, a well-established man of sixty working on Wall Street, who hires a copyist—seemingly no different from any other copyist. But Bartleby is different.

“At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famish- ing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light and by candle-light.”

One day, the Lawyer has a small document he needs examined. He calls Bartleby in to do the job, but Bartleby responds: “I would prefer not to.” This answer amazes the Lawyer, who has a “natural expectancy of instant compliance.” He is so amazed by this response, and the calm way Bartleby says it, that he cannot even bring himself to scold Bartleby. Instead, he calls in Nippers to examine the document instead.

Since then for whatever he is asked to do he responds “I would prefer not to”.

I feel like Melville’s touches the problem of rising middle-class job dissatisfaction and depression, as well as realizing the future significance of Wall Street to American life. Nowadays, many of us are so unhappy with our job because of we might be underemployed or because that is not the job we dream of. We might wish but in fact there are very few Bartelbys in the world now who could respond to their Boses by saying “I would prefer not to”.

The video that I picked shows the scene in which Bartleby refuses to do what he is asked to do by saying “I would prefer not to”. While his coworkers show amazement and resentment, he still insists on not doing that.