/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21584456]

Why does everyone over-analyse this and not realise it's just a well written allegory for depression and the resultant fears of death the mental illness brings?

[Anonymous No.21584480]

>>21584456
>allegory
you can't bitch about over-analysis and then deny that the text exists outside of mere analysis.
The story is about a guy who turns into a bug and how this blows up his shitty family dynamic.

[Anonymous No.21584490]

>liiiiivin like a bug ain't easy

[Anonymous No.21584496]

he's just a bug

[Anonymous No.21584499]

>>21584480
I'm not denying it exists outside of the plot I'm just saying you don't have to look very far outside of 'cockroach = inner mental illness goes scuttle scuttle'

[Anonymous No.21584504]

>>21584490
No meme I would love a Metamorphosis musical.

[Anonymous No.21584516]

>>21584504
>Oh look
>but there he is
>what will he say?
>I'm a lonely German
>a lonely German from PRAGUE
>I wonder what I'll write about?
>maybe I'll write about BUGS
https://youtu.be/8uaaF83eVig

[Anonymous No.21584529]

The real question is why does 90% of Kafka discussion focus on this one story and not this masterpiece
>am I well covered up...
>uhhh I guess so ya
>YOU WANTED TO COVER ME UP!!!

[Anonymous No.21584557]

>what did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.21584561]

>>21584557
He means that they're incredibly annoying , neurotic and depressive

[Anonymous No.21584575]

>>21584561
If only that's all they were

[Anonymous No.21584577]

>>21584456
It’s not an allegory

[Anonymous No.21584628]

>>21584529
Kafka originally meant this story, the Stoker and The Metamorphosis to be published as one book called The Sons, it was his publisher who separated them

[Anonymous No.21584671]

>>21584499
>cockroach
A cockroach is an insect that is flat in shape with large legs, and Gregor is anything but flat: he is convex on both sides, belly and back, and his legs are small. He approaches a cockroach in only one respect: his coloration is brown. That is all. Apart from this he has a tremendous convex belly divided into segments and a hard rounded back suggestive of wing cases. In beetles these cases conceal flimsy little wings that can be expanded and then may carry the beetle for miles and miles in a blundering flight. Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.) Further, he has strong mandibles. He uses these organs to turn the key in a lock while standing erect on his hind legs, on his third pair of legs (a strong little pair), and this gives us the length of his body, which is about three feet long. In the course of the story he gets gradually accustomed to using his new appendages—his feet, his feelers. This brown, convex, dog-sized beetle is very broad.

In the original German text the old charwoman calls him Mistkäfer, a "dung beetle." It is obvious that the good woman is adding the epithet only to be friendly. He is not, technically, a dung beetle. He is merely a big beetle. (I must add that neither Gregor nor Kafka saw that beetle any too clearly.)

[Anonymous No.21584674]

>>21584628
Thanks for teaching me a fact anon ^.^

[Anonymous No.21584874]

>>21584671
Not this shit again, it really doesn't matter. A bug is a bug.

[Anonymous No.21585083]

[Anonymous No.21585121]

>>21584456
>KAfrFanzKA
what did they mean by this?

[Anonymous No.21585161]

>>21585083
very kafkaesque