Erick Cumbe

Philip Yusupov

Steven Schwartz

Zhongyu Zhang

In Franz Kafka’s story titled ‘The Metamorphosis’, the reader is introduced to a man named Gregor who works as a traveling salesman. The main focus of the story is Gregor’s transformation from a man into an insect and how he and his family deal with the rather unusual circumstances they have been plagued with. As part of our class project, we selected four questions that we thought would provide us with the opportunity to learn more about Gregor through our own interpretations of events or ideas that are not straightforward. In doing so, we are able to understand the significance of occasions and ideas as to how they relate to our own selves.

Our first question, answered by Steven Schwartz, looks into the significance behind why Gregor’s family did not attempt to find a cure for him after he turns into a bug. The answer provides a unique view into Gregor- through the abilities of his family. We see that Gregor provided his family with so much, that they became unable to take care of themselves.

Why doesn’t Gregor’s family try to find a cure for him?

After turning into an insect, Gregor’s family decides to leave him as be and shut him off from their world. They alienate him which ultimately leads Gregor to want to die. Interestingly, one does not have to put too much effort to realize that Gregor’s family does absolutely nothing in the way of curing him. While this may seem odd at first, a closer examination into the actions of Gregor’s parents and sister shows that they simply had no drive to do anything- especially not work hard and find a cure for their breadwinner.

As the start of the story, we see that Gregor’s entire family depend on him. They rely on him for the food they eat, the home they sleep in and everything in between. As a result, we can conclude that Gregor’s family simply were not capable of doing a lot on their own.

This inability can be found in certain subtleties in the story. For instance, now that Gregor is unable to work and provide for his family, they resort to renting out space in their apartment to people who need a place to stay. While this idea may seem like a good way of making ends meet, we see that the family is unable to keep their apartment in good condition- a task that should be relatively simple when compared to all the things Gregor used to do for them. We see this inability to keep the apartment clean when one of the lodgers gets angry and declares: “… considering the disgraceful conditions prevailing in this apartment and family I immediately cancel my room.”  The very fact that they can’t even manage to keep a few rooms in their house clean and in good condition, shows just how incapable they actually are.

As a result of their proven incapability in doing simple things (take care of their home) the fact that they didn’t even try to help Gregor makes sense. It’s not that they didn’t want to, but rather they simply couldn’t.

Next, being that the above question allowed for us to delve into why Gregor’s family did not try to help him, we look into what Gregor’s relationship with his family is like. In his answer, Philip Yusupov discusses the relationship Gregor had with each of his family members.

What’s the relationship between Gregor and his family?

Gregor is the only one working in the family before his transformation. Dad failed to support the family. Gregor feels responsible for his family and takes his role very seriously. Dad attacks Gregor in different ways and being aggressive towards him. Mom tries to protect Gregor, but she ends up being not very successful in this. Gregor’s sister seems to be the closest relatives to him. Gregor was even trying to pay for the music classes. However, after Gregor’s change, the family completely abandoned him. To sum up, I feel that the relationships between the family and Gregor are distanced and cold.

Moving forward, now that we know a bit more about Gregor’s relationship with each of his family members, we decided to move along to the fuzzy, unclear characteristics illustrated regarding Gregor’s dead insect body. In answering this question, Zhongyu Zhang compares Gregor’s character to other characters found in books by Kafka. In doing so, we see that the ambiguity behind Gregor’s corpse is typical of Kafka.

What is the significance of the ambiguity behind Gregor’s corpse?

Gregor is a very typical character of Kafka. He was alienated in his life. He worked hard tried to feed his family but cannot get even a little respect. In this story his transformation didn’t change any of his situation.  He was still worried about train schedule and struggled with his small legs. The second maid his family employed she doesn’t have any fear of this “thing”. That points that is was not his transformation put him in this tragic situation. His death might be a release. Kafka didn’t put much passage on his death. Gregor was nothing but negligible in the society. His sister who was accounting on him felt happy on his death. His parents could start a new chapter of life. But only Gregor himself knew how much he suffered which had to finished with death.

Lastly, we felt as if the final necessarily part in understanding Gregor and who he was would be appropriately executed if we talk about the reaction his family had to his death. When answering the question of the odd reaction Gregor’s family had to his death, Erick Cumbe points to the fact that his family had already started to act as if he didn’t exist since his transformation. In essence, the response his family had makes good sense.

Why do you think Gregor’s parents and sister are unfazed about his death in the end?

Gregor’s parents and sister are unfazed about Gregor’s death in the end because they didn’t really care for him at that point. They would disregard Gregor and basically make him feel that he wasn’t part of the family anymore. Which in a way makes sense because of the change that happened to him. Gregor noticing this, realizes that living doesn’t mean anything anymore. Gregor living doesn’t benefit his family, which is why he dies with no regrets because he’s no longer a burden.

By answering the questions above, we are able to obtain a better understanding and idea of who Gregor was and how he impacted his family. While our answers are based off of information found in the text, as part of the nature of the questions, we used our own analysis to find the significance in the ideas raised and questioned in each of the four questions. It is through doing this text-based answering that we were able to in a sense ‘follow’ Gregor through his life and get to know him better. The order in which we chose to ask the questions follows Gregor’s life in a way that makes sense chronologically.

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Our other two categories are as follows:

Category 2: Gregor’s Transformation

Questions:

1. What does the randomness of Gregor’s transformation represent?
2. Did Gregor deserve to be transformed into a bug?
3. What does Gregor’s death represent?

We put these questions together mainly because they all focus on Gregor’s transformation from human being to insect. We thought that doing so would allow for us to obtain a better understanding of the situation Gregor found himself in now that he is an insect.

Category 3: Understanding the Story

Questions:

1. How would the story be different if Gregor had transformed into a different animal?
2. Why is Gregor so focused on time?
3. Do you ever feel like you’ve suddenly woken up in the body of an ugly critter? If yes, how so?

We categorized these questions together for the purpose of understanding the story of The Metamorphosis better. These questions all cover a different aspect of the story, and can potentially be transformed into long, highly analytical answers which would really obtain a better understanding of the story.

Out of all the Emily Dickinson poem suggestions that we had to choose from, the one that caught my attention the most was My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun (764). The reason being that I saw “gun” in the title, I’ve always been fascinated guns and weapons ever since I was little because of all the action movies that I grew up watching, so reading this poem was just like watching a movie. When the poem begins it’s kind of hard to read or understand because of the dashes that it consists, but after reviewing it over and over again, it’s clear that Emily is referring to someone taking her away at gun point it seems and how she feels stuck or helpless. As the poem progresses it sounds like she’s being taken somewhere against her will. In this case it will be to the woods and she’s trying to speak to the person that’s taking her but she’s being ignored. Later on it seems like she doesn’t know how she should feel or react, she’s not sure if she should smile. It’s kind of sad because it’s clear that she’s being kidnapped against her own will and doesn’t know what to do with herself. It kind of reminds me to a show that I just finished watching recently called “13 Reasons Why” on Netflix that has a lot of drama that compares to what’s happening in this poem. Towards the end of the poem it gets interesting because I believe that she actually has the opportunity to escape but doesn’t act upon because she doesn’t want to hurt anyone. When she states “For I have but the power to kill, Without – the power to die” it’s clear that if the opportunity of hurting someone was presented to her, she wouldn’t act upon it because if she did she’ll just hurt herself. In other words by hurting herself I think she means going against her morals.

In the Manifesto Packet, Aphorisms on Modernism by Mina Loy it kind of sounds like a negative ritual of definitions as it progresses. By that I mean that it goes on defining each term in a dark manner. For instance, when it talks about Morality it spoke out to me the most, the reason being that it says “Morality was invented as an excuse for murdering the neighbors” you can see that it’s different in the way that it tries to express a message. When it talks about “murdering the neighbors,” I think the author approaches morality in the negative sense. Thea actual definition of morality is principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. In this case killing your neighbor will obviously be a wrong or bad behavior. I also found this line interesting because it made me think of one of the ten commandments that says “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. In other words by saying that morality was invented as an excuse for murdering the neighbors, does that mean that morality goes against one of the ten commandments? The thing that I like about this excerpt the most is that it’s real, in other words, it’s not worded in a way that seems fake or cheesy. Now a days I’ve noticed that most writers are scared to write the way that they actually want to write, so I appreciate the realness and darkness of this excerpt.

Handball

Serving is the start of an opportunity to win

Short is not hitting with effort

Long is hitting it with anger

Down is what prevents you from being successful

Point Game is a step away from what you desire

Game point is the end of all your efforts

The manifesto that I wrote above I was trying to reflect Mina Loy’s excerpt in my own way. Instead of giving definitions that were dark I tried to lightened up the mood by writing it about a sport that I’m really passionate about that is Handball. Instead of making it dark like she did in her excerpt, I did something similar and made it dramatic. Since I didn’t have definitions specifically, I used the call outs that you say in handball while playing and defined it in the way it makes me feel.

After reading the article, Nineteenth-century British critics of Realism by Elaine Freedgood, and a chapter of the novel, Adam Bede by the George Eliot, the difference between Realism and Fictionalism are expressed when it comes to each author’s personal preference in their own writing. For instance, in the article, Elaine Freedgood explains that “realism is responsible for representing social and individual experience as it really occurs in the world outside the novel.” (Freedgood, 326) Therefore, she claims that this is her preference when it comes to her own writing. To summarize what she believes in, ultimately that extending the truth or writing fictional things just feeds the reader false information which defeats the purpose of her writing. When I first encountered this I found it incorrect because there is always a purpose for writing because even in a made up story you can still spread a subliminal message to your audience, but at the same time agreed with the fact that reading fictional stories kind of does defeat the purpose of writing because you’re just writing lies in a way. In the modern era, I have noticed that most of our society is interested in knowing the truth and not really interested in made up stories or in this case fictional stories. For example, when you take a look at novels and even movies that are airing, the ones that are revolved around being based on a true story have been proven to have more hits. Why is that? I think that society has realized that in order to I guess get further in life you must learn from the stories of others. This is shown when she states “I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box narrating my experience on oath.” (Freedgood, 326) Stating that she is narrating her experiences just reflects a quote that says “you learn from your mistakes,” which in this case her audience learns throughout her mistakes and other words don’t commit the same ones in their life.

George Eliot on the other isn’t really a fan of realism, he prefers using fictionalism in his own writing. He even states that “Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.” (Eliot, 2) In my opinion, he’s also right because when you focus your writing around fictionalism you can manipulate the story and basically drag it on to make it turn out however you want it to be, just for it to be a good story. Which in cases like if you were to base your writing around realism you can’t really do that because you would have to end the story explaining the truth. Let’s face it expressing everything that is real, isn’t always the best option being that real stories don’t have happy endings all the time. For example, when it comes to stories in general, most readers nowadays are big fans of a happy ending. Although this can be a possibility in real life, in some cases it isn’t and an audience encountering an ending like that for instance can end up being upset with the way the story ended.

After reading the four poems, the one that stood out to me the most was the poem From The Manyoshu. The reason being that it’s a poem that is revolved around the concept of love. When it comes to the discussion of love and romanticism, in a way it has always interested me. Love, in my opinion, is such a big word and most importantly a big feeling that most people don’t know how to explain at times, which I find fascinating. Personally, I’m guilty of this because I’ve told people that I’ve loved them, but in reality, I never actually understood what love is or if I even felt it towards them. What intrigued me the most was how throughout this poem he manages to express his love by comparing it to things in nature.

With this said, love in this poem isn’t shown on a positive note but in a sad way. It demonstrates a love story that ended with people hurt because of the distance between them. In the poem, we can immediately see that he loves his wife especially when it comes to his words. He just proves how much he cares about her and the regret that he feels for leaving. For example, when he says ” Away I have come, parting from her…My heart aches within me…My wife waving her sleeve to me…But the sleeves of my garment are wetted through with tears.” (Lines 13-30) This just shows the pain that he’s going through because he’s leaving his wife behind that he even shows emotion because he begins to cry. I find this interesting because it goes against that famous saying that “Real men don’t cry” which in my opinion just shows how strong the power of love can be that it can break the manliness of man.

Although the other poems were interesting I felt that the song Right My Wrongs by Bryson Tiller related to this poem a lot more. This song is a love song as well, but it revolves around cheating and asking for forgiveness. Throughout the song, it’s clear that he talks about the multiple amounts of times that he’s cheated on his girlfriend and how he regrets doing so. With this said, he realizes how his wrong actions have caused him to lose someone who actually cared for him and how he wants her back for good. Which is why he has a repetitive chorus saying “Right my wrongs” because he wants to make things right and be faithful towards her and show her the love that she deserves. In this song, he also states “I’ve gotta right my wrongs, with you is where I belong, you’ve been down from the go, recognition is what you want, and it’s something that I should know.” This just shows the regret that he’s feeling for being a cheater and a liar and how he’ll do anything to get her back.

This song relates to the poem because it shows regret and the desire to have your loved one back. Both of these examples show regret because in the poem the husband regrets leaving his wife behind and being away from her and in the song Bryson Tiller realizes regrets cheating. It also shows regret because you can tell that both the husband and Bryson are miserable without their significant other’s presence. Both examples also show how they want their loved one back because in the poem he regrets not spending so much time with his wife and even cries about it and in the song, it shows that Bryson wants his girlfriend back because he promises many things to convince her to give him another chance. The only thing that is different between these two examples is that in the poem the couple, in my opinion, are still together they’re just far away from each other and it just shows how much he misses his wife. And in the song, Bryson isn’t with her and he actually did something significantly wrong which was cheating on her and he’s basically on his knees asking for another chance.

A modern revision of Frankenstein that came out not too long ago is the Disney movie called Frankenweenie. Even though this movie came out in 2012, which I consider modern, it still holds some of the similar concepts that Mary Shelley used in the book Frankenstein that we’re reading in class. Frankenweenie’s approach to the story is slightly different than Mary Shelley’s because of instead of “creating a human” it’s based around “reviving a dog that has passed away”. The movie is basically about a boy named Victor Frankenstein that doesn’t really get along with others but his dog, Sparky. In the movie, Victor wants to participate in the science fair at his school but in order to get his father’s permission to do so, he needs to play baseball. With this being said, during a game, Sparky chases the ball and unfortunately gets hit by a car which ultimately leads to his death. Since Victor learned about the effects of electricity and how it potentially brings animals back to life in class. He decided to try it on Sparky one night using lightning. When Victor’s experiment actually worked and he brought Sparky back to life, one of his classmates, Edgar, actually finds out about what Victor has accomplished and blackmails him in order to find out how he did it. Once Edgar learns how to do it, he doesn’t keep it a secret. In fact, he tells the rest of his classmates which caused many students to revive the dead and use these experiments as submissions for the science fair. This ultimately doesn’t end well because most of the students have created monsters that are now roaming around the town.

What’s interesting about Frankenweenie is that although the concept is a bit different at the end it displays the same message in a different way. The little differences that the movie has from the text are mostly done so it can be appropriate for the age group of the viewers. Being that Frankeweenie is a Disney movie, mostly children are going to watch it and changing it to a movie that begins with the “happiness of bringing a friend back to life” rather than the “guilt of creating a monster” is smart. The reason being because it has a smoother transition into the problems that will occur in the movie than can relate to the book.

In both the book and the movie the Victor’s are guilty in my opinion. And that’s how I feel that they relate to each other in modern time. In both situations, they didn’t take control of the situation and that’s why in the book for instance, in one of the many situations, it led to the creature killing Victor’s brother. For example, “The filthy daemon, to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother?” (83, Shelley) When he says “to whom I had given life” it immediately shows that it’s his fault that his brother died. He created the monster and not only did he let the monster escape. He also didn’t educate the monster to follow orders, in other words, he didn’t take control of the situation because if he did his brother would be alive and the monster wouldn’t be aggressive. In Frankenweenie, Victor didn’t control the situation because he let himself get blackmailed. Which lead to chaos in his city with all the dead creatures coming back to life. Both of these stories display the same message of taking the blame for what you’ve done.

As I continue to read Frankenstein, I realize how different some people can react to difficult situations that tend to happen throughout life. In this case when a mother passes away. The passage that I would be focusing on is when Victor is about to leave his family in Geneva to pursue his studies at the University at Ingolstadt. This whole situation that I’ll be focusing on takes place throughout Chapter three and four. As he’s about to leave, his mom, sadly catches scarlet fever from Elizabeth and because of this illness unfortunately passes away. Although, Victor is present when his mother dies and griefs for a bit he still decides to go to the University at Ingolstadt. Once he arrives there he gives himself no time to recuperate from what has happened back home and he immediately starts working on his sciences.

The major question that I have to ask “Is why didn’t he just give himself time to feel better ?”. Viewing it from another perspective I think that it’s kind of absurd that he would just leave like that because most people in his situation would just stay home in Geneva with their family and grief about their loss. Time is essential in situations like these because time heals all wounds. I understand that he was really interested in the creation of life and the discussion about science after having the talk with Professor Waldman; but I believe that he acted this way and at a quickly manner because he didn’t know how to cope with the situation of losing his mother. In other words he didn’t want to go through the process of being sad or emotional and in a way put it to the side and do something else to distract himself. Although, this can seem like a good idea in the long run it will always comes back and affect you.

Putting all his time into his work also affected him later on in the story because we noticed how passionate he was getting about actually creating human life. With all this excitement that he had about his creation and basically having no social life we can also infer how disappointed he would be if it were to fail. Anyone who spends so much time doing something expects their project to come out correctly and just as they imagined. In Victor’s case when he finally finished he wasn’t happy with his end results instead he was terrified because it didn’t turn out the way he planned it to. He expected it to be beautiful and it was horrific. The question that I would like to ask here is “Was the death of his mother in the back of his head when he was working on his creation ? Is that the reason why it came out wrong ?”. I believe that the reason why he messed up wasn’t because he didn’t know how to actually do the work but because he probably got distracted along the way with his past.

Growing up in a divorced home, I’ve always felt alone growing up. Instead of talking to anyone about my problems, I always sucked it up and acted like everything was okay in order for my family to move on. I never thought about how bad this was health wise, but I realized that all those kept emotions would just build up inside and at the worst moments I would just explode. That’s one thing that I regretted the most and till this day am still working on it. My mom being a single parent, I thought that being this way would just benefit my mom in minimizing her troubles and guilt for getting a divorce with my dad. For my little sister on the other hand, I acted like this because I played the father figure in her life. I would take care of her, take her to school, cook for her,  and made sure that she never needed anything when my mom was working her two jobs. I didn’t want her to see me upset about was going on in our life at the time, so I put a fake smile so she can grow up happy. As I grow up and time goes by

I try to be more open

to express my feelings

but I’m still sheltered

Being in a silent setting and alone is very common and has become comforting in my life. I know others can be reading this and think that I’m weird but I enjoy being in my own personal space. Being this way has helped me because I’m in my own world and that’s one way that I implement one of Zen’s principles in my life. Doing this helps me reach my enlightenment persay because it’s my way of meditation. How? I think about my problems and as weird as it sounds, I talk myself in my own head and figure out solutions to those problems. This is my form of “breathing”, because instead of freaking out and looking for help I deal with issues on my own. I don’t depend on others this way and being by myself helps me clear my thoughts in a peaceful way.

I sit alone

thinking for a better tomorrow

peace at last

My friends, coworkers, family members but most of all my girlfriend always want me to express myself to them. Even though I struggle to do so most of the time. I still appreciate the thought of them taking the time to actually care for me and ask ” Is everything alright?” Or ” Are you okay? “. This falls under one of Zen’s principles which is to appreciate the little things. All though this may seem like something little, for me just that question means a lot. Which is why I’m really appreciative for having these kind of people in my life . I know that I can go to them for anything.

My friends are there for me

asking me questions

couldn’t ask for more

As of now I’ve learned to cope with my past and be excited for my future. I’ve come to terms to that everything happens for a reason and that’s what keeps me calm and in a positive mindset. This is what helps me reach another one of Zed’s principle of natural state. My natural state is being quiet, humble, but most importantly grateful for the little things.

Life can be hard

struggles and kept emotions

there’s always light at the end