ENG 1120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Literary Modernism
23 Mar 2018
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Kafka"s critics have described his work as uninterpitrable: impossible to arrive at any de nitive interpretation. First line of story is a body changed into some form but not by the gods or some special force, it is an ordinary human into a gigantic insect. Opening line is very direct, no explaining how or why the change had happened. We can"t assume it"s a dream because we are immediately told that it was no dream pp. Gregor doesn"t seem to really realize the implications of his new form: he immediately turns to the common place. Complete disconnect between gregor"s transformation and his thought process. Gregor is viewing the whole thing as an imaginary delusion. Gregor"s speech like everthing has become nonsense but gregor still thinks that it can be part of an illness. He isn"t viewing the situation as real or permanent in any way. The chief clerk also seems to share gregor"s opinion about illness.
