Monster

Monster

Submarine.

Everyone has off days.  Days where we aren’t ourselves.  Your days always recap in your dreams, if not the same, differently, but they seem to always to relate to each other.  I’m having a bad dream.  “Wake up Gregor! Wake up!” I keep repeating it to myself, over and over.  After eternal seconds, I wake, only to wish I didn’t.  Is it just a chain of nightmares?  Is my mind playing games with me?  I think to myself, “I need glasses,” and, “I may be under the weather.”  But after a few seconds and minutes pass by, the only words repeating again are, “wake up.”

Click.  Click.  Click.  My skin is no longer skin.  Click.  Click.  Click.  My stomach is now slightly domed and hard.  “Wake up,” I repeat.  Click.  Click.  Click.  Some of my senses are now determined by these brown and fuzzy antennae.  This cold weather and snow outside the windows don’t make the shaking any better. Brown stiff sections cover my stomach, I dared not look at my legs.  I try to lift them: small, skinny, fuzzy, multiple.  My voice, like an alien; unrecognizable.  What has happened?!  How can I explain this to everyone at work?  No one would believe me.  My 15 years of service at my job, and never have I missed, but everyone would get suspicious.  How embarrassing!  Everyone will notice me.  I already missed my train, but may catch the next one.  What the hell do I do now?

I can’t let my parents see me, especially not my mom, her poor little heart won’t be able to cope with the fact that her young boy has turned into an ugly creature.  A monster.  It’s almost funny how fast people change.  Funny how we take our hands and feet for granted on a daily basis.  No, not funny at all.

It is now a quarter after 7.  The door knocks and out comes my mother’s voice, “Gregor!  Are you alright sweetheart? Are you feeling under the weather?  Is there something that I can get you?”  She hasn’t heard my voice until now. “I’m fine mom!,” I replied, and I felt her vibe: concerned.  She tells me that the chief clerk has arrived to my house to see how I’m progressing.  I tell him that I’m doing better, that I’m just getting ready to get the 8 o’clock train, and to not worry about me.  But who am I kidding?  I’m befuddled.  My present state of mind is completely off the charts.

My goal was to go to work.  I open the door and allow them to see my present state.  I am no longer human, but a vermin.  “MY GOODNESS!”, says the chief clerk.  Mother starts to weep, while father holds her and steps back, as if I am a monster.  My sister in shock: blank face, eyes popping, jaw dropping.  The painful quietness filling up everyone’s ears.  Everyone’s fear radiates the hallway.  I feel everyone’s eyes on me, except for my poor mother.  Her eyes red, I’m no longer her good boy, I am the family burden.

The family burden I remained.  For the following two weeks, my own parents didn’t come into my room.  I didn’t leave it.  My room has become the shell that never comes off the turtles’ backs.  I am my own company.  My little sister , Grete, is the only one who is capable of coming into my room, but it isn’t to see me.  Grete has grown dramatically, and has tried to take over the role I played in the family.  She cleans and fixes my room and cleans the debris I leave behind.  Property is destroyed from the acidity of my bodily fluids.  They make this horribly disgusting sound, almost like a huge wet tongue covered in thick saliva, except it’s a thousand times louder.  My mom still doesn’t dare to see me.

Grete was my only hope to having contact with society, and not just talking to myself all the time.  As a man, I had a responsibility of working and providing for the family.  I am no longer the provider in the family, which is a shame, almost as if I am stripped from my manhood.  I am no longer a man.  I am less than a person: a waste of life.  You see, I thought Grete was a good child, covering for me while I am ill, but it wasn’t the case.

With the door always closed, outside sounds sound hollow: deep.  I overheard Grete talking to my parents about me being too much to handle.  I thought she was different, my little sister, has now turned her back on me and not taking care and responsibilities on me.  I rue the day this all started.  My family and friends are nothing but stranger now and it’s painful.  Sometimes my brain goes on overload.  There’s not much i can do when I’m by myself surrounded by four walls and the shaking sound of my antennae.  I will go to sleep now, sleep makes everything better.

 

 

 

 

In “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, the story of a man who converted into a vermin is told in a third-person narration.  The whole story focused a lot on how his life affected everyone around him, rather than the effect it had on him.  While reading the story, I felt it was a lot more important to show how it affected him rather than everyone else, because, after all, the change did happen to him, and not anyone else.  In my retelling of the story, I change the narration from third-person, to first-person.  In the short story, “Monster,” my version of “Metamorphosis,” I allow the reader to get a glimpse of what it was like for Gregor Samsa after becoming a vermin.

As a person living in a big city in the 21st century, I felt like the whole story symbolized a lot of the problems that we have now.  In my eyes, I felt it was something that our society has not accepted yet, and is seen as a monster to everyone else but themselves and alike-people.  I felt like the Gregor’s mother represented society’s lack of acceptance towards the situation.  Towards the end, Gregor dies, and everyone is relieved, which in my eyes, it interpreted as a suicide of the unaccepted group in our society, because society, up until now, kills what they don’t like.  In my retelling, I managed to focus on the pain and neglect that Gregor went through after being transformed.

In the beginning of “Metamorphosis,” Gregor wakes up from a chain of nightmares, and it’s the point in the story where he realizes he is no longer human.  In my interpretation of the story, I felt like it was still that lack of acceptance, and this is the point where he starts to think of how it would be like when the problem is faced in reality.  “What has happened?!  How can I explain this to everyone at work?  No one would believe me. […] How embarrassing,” (second para…Monster).  I made Gregor’s character panic more than the original version just to emphasize the drastic changes and how hard it is for him to deal with something like that.  In all situations in real life, one has to accept things first in order for others to take you seriously.  I felt like his character didn’t do that because his parents and sister would walk all over him and neglect him, so I made him a lot weaker in order for that to stand out later on in the story where Grete’s character turns on him.

“Metamorphosis” kept relating to society, in my eyes, and I felt like some examples of social issues we have had or still have today are things such as blacks versus whites, and straights versus gays.  In both issues, the ones who don’t accept, is the monster in the other’s eyes.  When one is not accepted by the other, they tried to strip them from as many rights as possible in order to eliminate them as a whole because they aren’t viewed as a “person.”  Gregor was being punished by removing his prized possessions.

“Gregor kept trying to assure himself that nothing unusual was happening, it was just a few pieces of furniture being moved after all […]. He was forced to admit to himself that he could not stand all of this much longer.  They were emptying his room out; taking away everything that was dear to him […].”  (Kafka 15)

I felt Gregor was being stripped from his manhood once he didn’t take the responsibility of providing for the family.  I felt like everyone thought it was his fault that he turned into a bug, and that he could have prevented it from happening, so they wanted to take away things because they felt he didn’t deserve.  In the story, Grete thinks that the furniture “was of no use to him at all,” although it was true, Gregor clearly states that he felt like crap when Grete was taking the furniture out of his room, although he wanted to help, they wouldn’t let him and he felt they didn’t care what he wanted to do, they just wanted him out of their way.  In my story, I used the fact that he could not go back to his job as a way to explain the responsibilities that he had to take care of as a man in the house, and how he is being frowned upon because he can no longer be the one who provides in the house and he is now being rejected from his family and now is a family burden.  “My room has become the shell that never comes off the turtles’ backs.  I am my own company. […]  I am no longer a man.  I am less than a person: a wasted of life.”

At the end of the story, Gregor dies and everyone is relieved because they can get a break from him and working.  I felt like they didn’t really care for their loss and were content with the outcome.  In our society, people would do anything to end something they don’t like.  In this case, Gregor’s family wanted nothing to do with him; they wanted to get rid of him, especially Grete.  He knew they didn’t want him in their lives anymore.  She says, “[…] we can’t carry on like this.  Maybe you can’t see it, but I can.  I don’t want to call this monster my brother, all I can say is: we have to try and get rid of it” (Kafka 22).  In my story, he dies almost like with a suicide.  He felt the rejection and he felt it was best to just sleep.  My ending is almost like he forced himself to die to make others happy.

I felt it was a lot more important to tell the story through the main character’s eyes.  If society saw things through everyone’s eyes, a lot more things would be accepted.  And if everyone knew Gregor’s true emotions and the crap everyone put him through for something that he couldn’t change or even picked to be, they wouldn’t treat him as badly as they did in the story.

Comparisons in “The Metamorphosis”

who Gregor was before vs his life after his change

Gregor narrated vs. quoted

tone changes: first discovering himself as vermin to when he later accepts his situation

characters treat Gregor: mother vs father; sister from beginning to end

struggles of family: financial burden vs financial boom

physical vs emotional abnormalities or ugliness

literal vs metaphorical understanding of Gregor’s transformation

family’s reaction to Gregor when he first transforms vs when he dies

status quo vs reaction to sudden change

Although Grete is notably uncomfortable with Gregor’s new state, she takes on the responsibility of caring for her brother, a job his father could not fill.

introduce the quotation: When Gregor’s presence shocks his mother and makes her faint, Gregor’s father blames him for this

provide the quotation

interpret it

analyze it

apply it back to our argument

When Gregor’s presence shocks his mother and makes her faint, Gregor’s father blames him for this: “It was clear to Gregor that Grete had not said enough and that his father took it to mean that something bad had happened, that he was he was responsible for some act of violence” (16). Here, Mr. Samsa, although not in the room, jumps quickly to the conclusion that something awful has happened and that Gregor is at fault. He clearly sees his son as a monster, and someone to be afraid of, who would purposely hurt the family. This shows that unlike Grete, he is not willing to engage in the current family situation.

Kafkaesque, Franz Kafka own literary style.

When I see the word Kafkaesque, my first guess is that it is something ‘of Kafka.’ I thought the word means his own works of literature maybe, or the style which he uses to write. From reading “The Metamorphosis,” the reader gets a sense of what style Franz Kafka uses, and one can say that is something different. It is not the plain literature we are used to, but something different and awkward. After searching the word Kafkaesque, I got that its meaning is “of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or resembling the literary work of Franz Kafka; marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity.”

When I read The Metamorphosis, my first reaction was that of disgust and fear at the same time. We are taken into this dream world, one can say, where Gregor has incarnated into a vermin, and now he is forced to live life like an animal, isolated from his family, who feel disgusted by his new appearance. “He was especially fond of hanging from the ceiling; it was quite different from lying on the floor; he could breathe more freely; his body had a light swing to it; and up there, relaxed and almost happy, it might happen that he would surprise even himself by letting go of the ceiling and landing on the floor with a crash
very soon his sister noticed his new way of entertaining himself- he had, after all, left traces of the adhesive from his feet as he crawled about.” Here we have a person who from nights’ sleep, went from being a perfect man to a creature. As the reader, one thinks that this only happens in dreams or nightmares better yet. Then we continue to read how he lives life as a horrible vermin, deprived from his human qualities for months.

From “The Metamorphosis,” we get to see how Franz Kafka uses a different literary style that is unique to his own writing, which is bizarre and grotesque, as what the word ‘Kafkaesque’ defines.

Blogging for Wednesday and beyond

To recap a few OpenLab-related items from class last week and today:

  • You can comment on glossary posts as well as the posts by the five students on for the day
  • You can comment more than once per class, but make sure at least one meets the 100-150 word requirement
  • You can write a blog post even if you’re not one of the 5–it would be on top of your regularly scheduled blog posts, though
  • You can add more than one word to the glossary per week–the more you add, the more we’ll all learn!
  • Please add a tag with the letter of your word to help us create a way to index our glossary (which we can’t alphabetize, unfortunately)–and go back and edit your previous glossary posts to add those tags
  • I’ve added the functionality to allow you to edit your comments. Please let me know that you can!

The group tasked with writing blog posts (300 words) by 5:00 Tuesday is the last group to post in the first go-round. Everyone else should comment (100-150 words for the required comment, any number for additional comments) by 10:00am on Wednesday. Once this final group has a turn, we can consider what works and what needs improving as we start our next round. If there’s anyone else who missed their turn to blog, jump in for Tuesday as well–but that doesn’t excuse you from commenting this time, too, since you were supposed to be on as a commenter for this class!

As always, remember to include a title that reflects what you’re writing (it shouldn’t be able to apply to everyone’s post and can certainly be longer than one word), choose appropriate categories and tags (or add if you want a tag that isn’t there already), write at least 300 words, proofread, and publish! If there are links or media you want to include, please do. Commenters, remember to proofread, too, and to take the opportunity to edit your comments after you publish them if necessary–we looked at how to do this in class on Wednesday. If you want to leave additional replies, you don’t need watch the word count, but you should still proofread!

New topics:

When you think of “The Metamorphosis,” can you picture it? Do you have a visual sense of the story? What provides that sense, or what would you need to have that sense if you don’t? After you consider that, you might compare the sense of the visual to other stories we’ve read so far. Or you might compare what you’ve envisioned with this short video featuring images from a graphic-novel adaptation of “The Metamorphosis.”

“The Metamorphosis” is translated from Kafka’s German “Die Verwandlung.” As you read, especially as you pay particular attention to the ways the story is crafted using particular words, consider that the words are the choice of a translator. If you are comfortable writing in another language, try translating your favorite passage from “The Metamorphosis” into that language to share with the class. Or, if you can read German, look online for a copy in German and try to translate a passage into English. What kinds of choices did you need to make to translate that passage? Is there anything that isn’t exactly the same as the version you read? Commenters who can read that language, what do you think about the translation, and would you have made the same choices?

There is a word, kafkaesque, based on Kafka’s writing. What do you guess it would mean, and why, based on reading “The Metamorphosis”? After you guess, look for the definition. Explain using details from “The Metamorphosis” why that’s the definition of the word. (Kafka’s is not the only author to have his name turned into an adjective, but it’s one more widely used outside of an English class. Faulknerian  is also a word, but with a narrower usage).

Most of these topics are from last time, but still valid topics for blogging:

We have been looking at the effects of the non-linear order of time in “A Rose for Emily” on Monday, but you might take the opportunity to consider what effect the sequencing has. How does the order affect your understanding of the story and your experience with it? What would be gained or lost if it were linear? What do I mean by linear? I mentioned in class the film “Pulp Fiction,” which plays with order in a very effective way. Are there other texts–written, filmic, etc–that do this that you want to call attention to?

What does gothic mean?  What is Southern Gothic, specifically? Wikipedia might be a good place to get a definition and explanation of what Southern Gothic is. How is “A Rose for Emily” an example of this? You might add that as your vocabulary word as well.

In what ways is “A Rose for Emily” similar to other texts we have read? different? What do you think about those similarities and differences?

The narrator in “A Rose for Emily” is different than others we have encountered. What term would you use to identify the narrator? is it a reliable narrator? Use evidence from the story to show why you say reliable or not.

What themes do you think “The Metamorphosis” introduces to us? Choose a particular passage that deals with that theme and reflect on it.

How do you deal with the outrageous situation presented in “The Metamorphosis”? Choose a passage that represents that and explain your reaction.

In what ways can we read “The Metamorphosis” metaphorically? What does metaphorically mean? Present one way it is a metaphor and explain that for us.

 

 

Glower

Glower: verb: to look or stare with sullen annoyance or anger

From: “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka: “Gregor!” shouted his sister, glowering at him and shaking her fist. That was the first word she had spoken to him directly since his transformation.”

Now I understand that Gregor’s sister was enraged and gave him a stare out of anger.

Blogging for Monday’s class

The group tasked with writing blog posts (300 words) for this weekend (mid-day Saturday, I believe, was what we decided) should be the final group to write a first post. Everyone else should comment (100-150 words for the required comment, any number for additional comments) by 10:00am on Monday. After this final group has a turn, we can consider what works and what needs improving as we start our next round. Anyone who missed their turn to blog should do so in this round–but that doesn’t excuse you from commenting this time, too!

As always, remember to include a title that reflects what you’re writing (it shouldn’t be able to apply to everyone’s post and can certainly be longer than one word), choose appropriate categories and tags (or add if you want a tag that isn’t there already), write at least 300 words, proofread, and publish! If there are links or media you want to include, please do. Commenters, remember to proofread, too, and to take the opportunity to edit your comments after you publish them if necessary–we looked at how to do this in class on Wednesday. If you want to leave additional replies, you don’t need watch the word count, but you should still proofread!

We’ll look at the effects of the non-linear order of time in “A Rose for Emily” on Monday, but you might take the opportunity to consider what effect the sequencing has. How does the order affect your understanding of the story and your experience with it? What would be gained or lost if it were linear? What do I mean by linear?

What does gothic mean?  What is Southern Gothic, specifically? Wikipedia might be a good place to get a definition and explanation of what Southern Gothic is. How is “A Rose for Emily” an example of this? You might add that as your vocabulary word as well.

From last time, but still valid topics for blogging:
In what ways is “A Rose for Emily” similar to other texts we have read? different? What do you think about those similarities and differences?

The narrator in “A Rose for Emily” is different than others we have encountered. What term would you use to identify the narrator? is it a reliable narrator? Use evidence from the story to show why you say reliable or not.

What themes do you think “The Metamorphosis” introduces to us? Choose a particular passage that deals with that theme and reflect on it.

How do you deal with the outrageous situation presented in “The Metamorphosis”? Choose a passage that represents that and explain your reaction.

In what ways can we read “The Metamorphosis” metaphorically? What does metaphorically mean? Present one way it is a metaphor and explain that for us.