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Title: The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories by Franz Kafka ISBN: 0-8052-1057-1 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: 14 November, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.91 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Uniquely Disturbing
Comment: Admittedly, Kafka is not an easy read. The Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony are the two parts of this book I am most familiar with, and I definitely recommend them to interested readers. Both are strangely imaginative stories, sometimes lacking in action, but more than making up for it in depth. I think Kafka's stories are riveting due to the psychological tension he creates, especially in 'Penal Colony'. That particular short story is also an operetta, which I recently saw. To see it acted out is a uniquely disturbing experience. Read on, but brace yourselves.
Rating: 5
Summary: A great introduction to Kafka
Comment: This is a splendid initiation into the warped imagination of Franz Kafka. In one swoop the reader gets the infamous Freudian "Metamorphosis" as well as some of Kafka's other macabre short stories.
Perhaps the best of these is "In the Penal Colony." It reads like Michel Foucault's "Discipline And Punish" on acid. It is almost like a satire on what Hegel liked to refer to as the "slaughterhouse of history." The story is at once terrifying and grotesquely comical.
The rest of the stories are typical Kafka; perverse but fascinating. For those who have a morose fascination with ghastly world of this author's literary fantasy, this is an exceptional book to begin with.
Rating: 4
Summary: lurid yet comical
Comment: The stories are penetrating and engrossing in manner --pulling you into the distorted imagination of Kafka. All of the stories were intriguing but I was drawn in most by the Metamorphosis and so I will therefore focus in on it here. While reading the Metamorphosis, I found myself at times bursting out with laughter. Perhaps it was the way I pictured how the bug looked in my mind that made me laugh but some scenes are pretty funny. For example, when Gregor's sister came into his room to bring him food "she came a little earlier than usual and caught Gregor perfectly still, gazing out the window, thus giving him a particularly frightful aspect...not only did she not enter, she actually jumped back and shut the door; a stranger could easily have thought Gregor had been lying in the wait for her and meant to bite her. Gregor naturally hid himself at once under the sofa but had to wait until noon for the sister's return, and then she seemed more uneasy than usual."
The sader aspect of this story is that after Gregor morphs into vermin, his preoccupation with practical, everyday concerns ends and he is no longer the productive breadwinner of the family. Suddenly the roles are reversed (his father, who was dependent on Gregor, actually mobilizes and goes back to work and even the sister gets a job) creating a dismal and resentful feeling amongst the family. No longer are Gregor's parents interacting with him and even though his sister cares enough to bring him food, when she finally catches a solid glimpse of him she is shocked at his appearance. The story finally climaxes with Gregor dying from an infection caused by an apple lodged in his back after his father had chucked it at him in order to get him back into his room. With the roles reversed we don't see what was perhaps the same caring and considerate family. I wonder if this is more symbolic for how Kafka felt as a novelist who was made to feel guilty for not accepting a more socially acceptable career or perhaps it has more racial connotations; after all, Kafka was Jewish in a society that probably considered people of his kind "vermin."
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Title: On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo by Walter Kaufmann, Friedrich Nietzsche ISBN: 0679724621 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 17 December, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Stranger by Albert Camus ISBN: 0679720200 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Trial by Franz Kafka ISBN: 0805210407 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: 28 March, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
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Title: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0802130348 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky ISBN: 067973452X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 30 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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