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    Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Unavailable
    Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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    Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Ebook266 pages4 hours

    Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

    By Franz Kafka and Jason Baker

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Franz Kafka is now one of the world’s most widely read and discussed authors. His nightmarish novels and short stories have come to symbolize modern man’s anxiety and alienation in a bizarre, hostile, and dehumanized world. This vision is most fully realized in Kafka’s masterpiece, “The Metamorphosis,” a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

    Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. “The Judgment,” which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and “The Stoker,” which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with “The Metamorphosis,” form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,” and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.

    Also included are “In the Penal Colony,” a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and “A Hunger Artist,” about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble Classics
    Release dateJun 1, 2009
    ISBN9781411432680
    Unavailable
    Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Author

    Franz Kafka

    Franz Kafka was born to Jewish parents in Bohemia in 1883. Kafka’s father was a luxury goods retailer who worked long hours and as a result never became close with his son. Kafka’s relationship with his father greatly influenced his later writing and directly informed his Brief an den Vater (Letter to His Father). Kafka had a thorough education and was fluent in both German and Czech. As a young man, he was hired to work at an insurance company where he was quickly promoted despite his desire to devote his time to writing rather than insurance. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote a great number of stories, letters, and essays, but burned the majority of his work before his death and requested that his friend Max Brod burn the rest. Brod, however, did not fulfill this request and published many of the works in the years following Kafka’s death of tuberculosis in 1924. Thus, most of Kafka’s works were published posthumously, and he did not live to see them recognized as some of the most important examples of literature of the twentieth century. Kafka’s works are considered among the most significant pieces of existentialist writing, and he is remembered for his poignant depictions of internal conflicts with alienation and oppression. Some of Kafka’s most famous works include The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle.

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    Reviews for Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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    • 5/5
      Metamorphosis / Winter of our discontent / MetempsychosisMetamorphosis, or Why a Bug?Gregor Samsa awoke one morning as a bug. "What has happened to me?" he thought. And that is the last he thought of how he arrived at his predicament. He acts throughout the story as a human Gregor adapting to life in a bug's body.Is Nietzche engaging in a thought experiment on personal continuity in Metamorphosis? What of Gregor is in this bug? He has a bug body, he must have a bug brain to be able to image through bug eyes, to move bug legs. But he has the consciousness of Gregor that initially externalizes itself outside the body, to talk, after a fashion, to stand and unlock the door, after a fashion. He soon loses the ability to talk and ceases to be Gregor to his family. But he has an immensely strong identity, rooted in providing for his family, and never ceases to be Gregor to himself until his death.But why a bug? Others have made the connection between Samsa and Samsara, the Buddhist wheel of life. According to Samsara, one is reborn an animal when one's human life is centered on survival and self-preservation. Gregor's life is centered on his hated job as traveling salesman, which he keeps only to provide for his family.Beyond that, the bug is absurd and creates a comical scene when, for instance, the head clerk flees down the stairs to escape this monstrosity. Gregor never ascribes this flight and fright to his own appearance, heightening the humor. None of us are bugs, though, and never expect to become one. But each of us could be exposed to a similar alienation, separation, isolation. Consider yourself developing a motor neural disease, confined to a wheelchair, losing gross motor functionality, the ability to speak. Like Gregor, you would have trouble opening doors, even moving through some doorways, communicating with your family. Then you regress, confined to bed, breathing through a tube, externally comatose but fully conscious. The situation in reality is not far removed from the absurd.We likely will not develop such a disease, but we can still experience some form of alienation. Are we also trapped in a job because of circumstance? Metamorphosis holds out hope that a situation can improve even when it appears hopeless. The Samsa family can no longer depend on Gregor's salary, they must work themselves, expand beyond the confines of their home. They find that they are quite capable and soon entertain thoughts of a happy future, a possible husband for Gregor's sister Grete. All are transformed through Gregor's metamorphosis, but a slightly less absurd metamorphosis might also have achieved a happy result. Gregor could simply have emigrated to Amerika, leaving his family to their own devices. Perhaps not morally defensible at some level, but better to feel your humanity than to live and die like a bug.
    • 3/5
      You gotta love Kafka's combos of human and animal (and insect) existence... I think, perhaps the most disturbing but rivetting story was "In the Penal Colony", but my favorite whimsy story was "Address to the Academy."

    • 4/5
      In this edition, Kafka's classic novella about a man who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant bug is accompanied by several short stories that repeat the themes of alienation, dehumanization, and the difficulty of being an artist in an uncomprehending world. Jason Baker's introduction, which focuses on Kafka's troubled relationship with his father, is helpful, as is Donna Freed's translator's note which explains the difficulties of interpreting Kafka for a modern American audience without losing the flavor of the original German prose. If you are going to read Kafka for the first time, this is a solid edition to start with.
    • 5/5
      Really a nice change of pace from so many other works where the plot is of high importance. Kafka is more like a fine meal; the point is not to finish the meal, but rather to enjoy the meal as you are consuming it.All of the stories are morbid and strange, enjoyable nonetheless. His grasp on language and his focus on deeper meaning and metaphors(no pun intended)is really quite impressive.
    • 1/5
      I've seen suggestions that if you like Haruki Murakami, you'd also probably like Kafka so that combined with seeing someone mention The Metamorphosis, I decided to read this book. It is a decision I regret. I managed to read all but the last three short stories before I gave up.

      My conclusion? While Murakami is whacked out and weird, there is a deliberateness to his work that makes the WTF-ness intentional. Kafka, however, is like listening to someone who is stoned, hallucinating, and paranoid due to a bad drug trip. It's manic, confusing, and I came away thinking that every character was insane or in the midst of a psychotic break.

      No.

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