Both Gregor Samsa from Franz Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis and Meursault from Albert Camus’ The Stranger struggle to communicate with the people around them. Although Samsa suffers from physical abnormalities while Meursault possesses...

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, in its continuously dissected and heavily studied narrative, details a transformation from man to creature but hides the true meaning of what it means to change form, both in mind and body. From the onset, it is...

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary defines existentialism, in part, as “a philosophical theory that…emphasizes the existence of the individual person… determining their own development through acts of the will.” Existentialist work stresses...

The human mind is so active that an individual experiences approximately 70,000 thoughts each day. These thoughts are often conflicting in their nature, as the stream of consciousness does not readily divide thoughts into categories, and thoughts...

In "A Report to an Academy," the marvelous transformation of the fictional ape Rotpeter offers striking insight into human adaptive behavior, and blurs and then elucidates the differences between man and ape. The short story, written as a letter...

Choice is inescapable and inevitable to all who exist or have ever existed. When meeting a fork in the road, a decision is always made, even if no action is taken. Utterly paradoxical, even the act of no decision at all is stepping in one...

During the twentieth century, life in Europe changed drastically, due to the multitude of events and changes that crowded this century. From the wars to the effects of the Industrial revolution, the lives of Europeans were constantly changing,...

Lu Xun and Kafka’s utilization of the physical body allows for the presentation of personal criticisms towards aspects of modernity and the social, political and economic changes of the movement. Modernity, due to its nature of bringing about...

Whether it be a gender hierarchy or a power system organized by income, human society has frequently fallen back on some form of an unequal power dynamic. Unfortunately, this type of structure can be extremely damaging to those at the bottom of...

When hard times hit, families must often take desperate actions in order to ensure financial stability in their household, and the Samsas in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis are no different. After Gregor, the main breadwinner of the family, wakes...

There is something about donning on a uniform that makes a man feel invincible and demand the respect of those around him. When times are tough, people tend to look towards the uniformed man for guidance and to help pull them through a difficult...

Communication plays a crucial role in Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” as the loss of communication eventually leads to the downfall and death of the novella’s protagonist, Gregor Samsa. Communication is of vital importance in order for a family to...

What separates humans from the animals we keep in cages? What makes our specific collection of bones classify as human? Over 200,000 years ago, humans evolved into the modern man and since then, brilliant and seemingly impossible feats have been...

The story of The Metamorphosis is a troubling one in that the author, Franz Kafka, left the interpretation of its proceedings open to the reader. Because Kafka did not leave any sort of metaphorical explanation for the short-story, there are many...

Atypical Existentialism Gregor Samsa was a person. A shockingly normal person. He dredged to work every day in spite of his general dissatisfaction, his home was nice enough, his family was there (if nothing else), and, like most things which have...

“Well, … listen, you don’t have to worry about getting rid of that stuff in the next room. It’s all been taken care of” (503). With indifference and a sigh of relief, the charwoman marked an official resignation of Gregor Samsa from his own life—a...

In order to address the paradoxes of eroticism and human desire for intimacy in The Trial, it is important to recognize the ongoing theme of bondage (in the classic master/slave sense). Without this undercurrent of power and servitude, it is...

Nihilism is "the destruction of everything without pity" (Palmieri, 3). A completely different movement that is sometimes lumped together with Nihilism is Existentialism, which is a belief that "the world is without meaning or purpose." It also...

Since its original date of publication in 1925, Franz Kafka’s The Trial has resisted interpretation. At first glance, the novel’s seemingly simple and serial sequence of events poses no problem for the reader. Though the incidents that involve...

In The Trial, Franz Kafka tells the story of Joseph K., a man under persecution of the law. The novel begins with the arrest of K., which inducts him into a seemingly bizarre legal system. The arrest proves peculiar, as K. is never told what he is...

The Trial is the most well-known novel of Franz Kafka, published in Berlin in 1926. The original manuscripts were collected and prepared fo publishing by Max Brod, Kafka’s closest friend, two years after the author’s death. Brod says that the...

The Sixth Amendment in the Bill of Rights ensures that any American citizen accused of a crime has the right to a fair trial; in other words, those who have been accused must be informed of the crimes that they are accused of, and are given the...

Local color is a genre of literature which seeks to record a specific way of life at a certain time and space therefore the main components of a local color fiction is: One of the prime features undoubtedly of local color fiction is location –...

Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country Doctor (1884) is classified as a local color fiction because of the encapsulated elements of time, space, memory, romanticism, stock characters, language, and the predominant city versus country theme. Local color...