Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Common Themes
In class the other day, we discussed how the father in The Judgment was literally judging the son and the son feared this. I found this theme of judgement and fear again in chapter one of The Metamorphosis. Gregor does not want to get out if bed that day to go to work, but knows that at some point he will have to. Gregor was contemplating his options after he missed the fist train and said that "even if he did catch the train, there would be no avoiding the boss's fulminations"(120). Gregor knows that the boss will be upset with him and judge him is he is late and Gregor does not want to go through that. Later in the story Gregor again supports the theme of judging and not wanting to be judged when the office manager comes to his house. Gregor is nervous and asks "why was [he] condemned to working for a company where the slightest tardiness aroused the murkiest suspicions?"(125).
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I think simply in the way Kafka writes, he likes to illustrate greatly the feelings and sensations of pain and discomfort such as describing Gregor getting up out of bed saying "for the contact sent icy shudders through his body" (Pg. 118).As for the judgment portion I think he plays with it more like the story in the Judgement as the son is afraid to be judged by his father and kills himself because of it; here however, I feel like Kafka uses the example of Gregor fearing his boss trying to show that judgment can affect people on a large scale as well as small scale.
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