Morphed

Many thanks to the twenty participants in Monday's meeting on Kafka's "Metamorphosis." It certainly confirmed the results of Professor Stanley Corngold's study in which he put forward one hundred and thirty different interpretations of the story.

Members of the group also enlightened us on sundry related topics such as the similarity of Gregor Samsa's name to the Sanskrit word "samsara," which means rebirth and renewal, and the diet of the dung beetle.

I realized at the end of the evening that I had forgotten to pose my "big question": If one reads "Metamorphosis" as a fable (i.e., of a man who turns into an insect, and of the reactions of his parents and sister to this circumstance), then what is the moral to be drawn from it?

I could attribute my lapse to being "under the influence" of Kafka, in whose world trivial questions can become quite important (and vice versa). At any rate, responses are welcomed.

"The Metamorphosis" : Questions for Discussion

Interpretive Questions

Why does Gregor worry about his job when's he's been transformed into a giant cockroach?

Why did the chief clerk show up at Gregor's home to inquire why he was not on the early train? (p.97)

Why does Gregor have no appetite for fresh food? (p.112)

Why do his sister's "ministrations" oppress Gregor (p. 117)?

When Grete sees Gregor on the wallpaper, Kafka tells us it "was the first time she had directly addressed him since his metamorphosis (p. 124)." Why not before?

Why does Mr. Samsa throw the apples at Gregor (p. 127)?

Why did the three lodgers have a "passion for order," especially in the kitchen (p. 133)?

Why did the charwoman wear an ostrich feather, and why did it annoy Mr. Samsa (p. 145)?

Are the changes Gregor's transformation engenders in his family -- in his father especially -- healthy?

Why does Greta finally decide that the Samsa family household can no longer continue under such conditions?

Is Gregor's decision to disappear a charitable or pathetic act?

Evaluative Questions

If you take the story at its face value (i.e., that Gregor could be transformed into an insect), are the characters' actions believable?

--Are we made to feel at all curious as to why Gregor turned into and insect?

--Does it matter?

Is Gregor Samsa a hero?

Textual Analysis

pp. 120-124, from "And this time he did not peer out from under it" to "fell down onto the middle of the big table."

pp. 135-137, from "Gregor's sister began to play" to "she kept free of any ribbon or collar."

pp. 143-end of story, starting with "At that the door of the Samsa's bedroom opened and Mr. Samsa appeared in his uniform ..."

Kafka-esque?

Franz Kafka's story The Metamorphosis is a fable of a man, Gregor Samsa, who awakes one morning to find himself changed into a giant insect, and of his family's efforts to deal with their former breadwinner's radical transformation.

Elif Batumen recently published a piece in the September 26th New York Times Magazine, "Kafka's Last Trial," on the legal battle over roughly one-third of Kafka's literary estate. This estate, which had been held by Kafka's friend and literary executor, Max Brod, was passed upon Brod's death in 1968 to his former secretary Esther Hoffe. When Hoffe died in 2007 at age 101, her will decreed the transference of the legacy to her daughters, who stated their intention to sell it to the German Literature Archive in Marbach, Germany. The National Library of Israel, however, has claimed rights to the estate under the term's of Brod's will. The case is now being argued in the Israeli courts.

Kafka's work published during his lifetime (which included the Metamorphosis) amounted to less that 450 pages. According to Batumen, however, recent estimates are that a new book on Kafka's work has been published every 10 days for the last 14 years. "Kafka studies now proliferate at a rate inversely proportional to that of Kafka's own production," Elif Batumen writes.

How do we account for the enormous fascination with Kafka? It must have something to do with Kafka having lived on so many levels as an outsider. He was born and raised in Prague of Jewish parents during the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and he wrote in German.

He was also a literary outsider. According to Werner Hoffmeister's World Book article on Kafka, he has been identified with Expressionism, Surrealism and Existentialism, yet "his writings do not belong to any particular literary school." You just have to read Kafka on his own terms. Some advice on how you do this comes from no less an august literary man than Albert Camus, who wrote (in his essay "Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka") : "Kafka's entire art consists in forcing the reader to re-read."

Questions for September 27th Great Books Discussion

The Huntington Public Library's Great Books Discussion Group meets Monday, September 27th. We will discuss an excerpt from "On Dreams," by Sigmund Freud, from the Great Books Reading and Discussion Program, Fifth Series, Book 1, available at the main library's customer services desk.

My major recommendation to help you prepare is to read Freud's own "specimen dream" concerning Frau E.L. apparently making a "pass" at Freud on page 74 (beginning "company at table or table d'hôte ... spinach was being served ..."). It is only one paragraph. Freud's analysis of this dream is found on pages 74 to 76. Here are some other questions to consider:

1. What is the "manifest content" of Freud's dream?

2. Why does a taximeter remind Freud of a table d'hôte?

3. What is the significance of the Goethe quote "You lead us into life, you make the poor creature guilty."? (M. D. Eder translates this as, "To earth, this weary earth, you bring us, to guilt you let us heedless go").

4. What is a "love that costs nothing"? (p. 88)

5. On page 76 Freud says, "Frau E. L.'s speech in the dream, 'You've always had such beautiful eyes,' can only have meant, 'People have always done everything for you for love; you have always had everything without paying for it [Emphasis added by Freud!]. " Is this indeed what it can only have meant.

6. Freud then says "The truth is, of course, just the contrary: I have always paid dearly for whatever advantage I have had from other people." Do we have any way of evaluating the accuracy of this statement? Clue: read the very next sentence : "the fact that my friend took me home yesterday in a cab without my paying for it must, after all, have made an impression on me."

7. Freud tells us that the dream about Frau E.L. was a variation on something that took place during his courtship of his wife. Is it possible to say that Freud is right or wrong in this interpretation?

8. What do you think is the "latent content" of Freud's dream?

9. Freud says in the last paragraph that his regret at spending a large sum of money on a family member was not a conscious regret. What do you think was the reason for Freud's regret?

10. Is Freud's classification of dreams into three categories in terms of their relation of manifest and latent content (on p. 79) valid? What is the difference between the first and second categories (i.e., "bewildering" dreams and ones that are "disconnected, confused, and meaningless.")

Freud in Dreamland

Our selection this month, "On Dreams," by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), was first published as part of the monographic serial publication Grenzfragen des Nerven und Seelenlebens in 1901. It was eventually published in its own right in 1911. Freud intended it as a popularization of some of the ideas he put forth in his longer and denser Interpretation of Dreams, which was published a little earlier. As the historian and Freud scholar Peter Gay has noted, "Freud was always his best expounder and advocate." In reading this text, it is helpful to remember that what we have here is Freud in his earlier period. You'll note that the dream he analyzes is his own, and the piece has none of the jargon he later used to promote the psychoanalytic movement with which his name has become so closely identified. I'll also call your attention to the quotation from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Goethe's Faust will be the subject of our discussions in November and December.

In Memoriam: Bernard Knox

This morning's New York Times brought news of the death on July 22d at the age of 95 of the renowned classicist, Bernard Knox, author of Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles' Tragic Hero and His Time (1957). Knox also translated a 1959 edition of our reading this month, Oedipus the King.

According to the Time obituary, Knox was deployed during the Second World War by the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) for service in Northern Italy. He found himself in an abandoned villa and chanced upon a copy of Virgil's Georgics. "As we ran and crawled through the rubble I thought to myself, 'If I ever get out of this, I'm going back to the classics and study them seriously."

To remember Knox, here is his translation of the Chorus's enigmatic musing on mortality -- which some claim was not written by Sophocles but rather added at a later time -- contained in the last lines of Oedipus the King:

Citizens who dwell in Thebes, look at Oedipus here, who knew the answer to the famous riddle and was a power in the land. On his good fortune all the citizens gazed with envy. Into what a stormy sea of dreadful trouble he has come now. Therefore we must call no man happy while he waits to see his last day, not until he has passed the border of life and death without suffering pain.

Questions re: "Oedipus the King"

Do we know why is Thebes suffering a pestilence at the beginning of the play? (p.12)

Why does the chorus say (p. 21):

I neither killed the king nor can declare
the killer, but since Phoebus set the quest
it is his part to tell who the man is.

Why is Teiresias consulted? Why is he led in by a little boy?

Why does Oedipus think Creon put Teiresias up to telling Oedipus that he, Oedipus, was Laius's murderer? Oedipus says Creon wanted to "keep his own mouth free of any guilt," but could there be other reasons?

Why does Jocasta say to Oedipus, upon hearing of the death of Polybus, "Still in your father's death there's light of comfort."

Interpret Jocasta's line (p.52), "O Oedipus, God help you! God keep you from the knowledge of who you are."

Why does the sole survivor on the attack on King Laius's entourage say they were attacked by a band of robbers?

Why does Jocasta kill herself?

Why does Oedipus gouge his eyes out?

Why does Oedipus tell Creon at the end of the play he wants to go to live in Cithaeron, where his parents once sent him to die?

Can we be punished for our actions even if we did them without knowing they were wrong?


For Textual Analysis

From p. 22, "Teiresias, you are versed in everything," to p. 27, the end of Teiresias's speech"

Creon's speech, pp. 34-35, beginning "Not if you reflect on it as I do."

Oedipus's speech, beginning p. 41, "Polybus was my father, king of Corinth" to the end (p. 43)

His interchange with Jocasta and the First Messenger beginnig p. 47, "Ha! Ha! O dear Jocasta to p. 50, "So that from this you're called you present name."

Pages 57 to 58, starting with Oedipus "O O O, they will all come" and then segueing into the choral ode and ending with "my mouth to sleep with your name."