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  • To highlight the selfish and egocentric nature of the family members
  • To create physiognomy for the character Gregor
  • Before: workaholic and perfectionist who had no other life aside from his work.
  • Initially, as a bug, physical appearance reveals his inner character
  • Being a bug changes his character.
  • Becomes more human as he changes into more of a bug/is a bug for a longer time
  • Gregor becomes more caring and feels more emotion by the end of the story

The pleasure principle is Freud's idea that it is an instinctive drive to seek pleasure (immediate gratification) and avoid pain, expressed by the id as a basic motivating force that reduces psychic tension.

- Grete, his sister, is the primary caretaker of Gregor.

- Provider of food everyday because she initially feels sorry for Gregor and genuinely seems to care about him as she feeds him.

- Eventually, she does it more out of habit and possessiveness and less out of kindness.

- Feeds him because it makes her feel good about herself and superior to her parents.

- Seflishness > kindness is proven to be true at the end of the story, when Grete begs her father to kill Gregor.

- The parents of Gregor also act on the pleasure principle because they reject him once they see his appearance as a bug.

- think of him less as their son, and more as a vermin.

- care more about their reputation and societal status than they do about the human person that is Gregor.

Background on Kafka

Background to Freud

hey girls

Freud was a psychologist who had many ideas about how the unconscious and conscious mind works.

Oedipus Complex: a subconscious sexual desire in a child, especially a male child, for the parent of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by hostility to the parent of the same sex. The child particularly fears what he believes to be the father's power to castrate him.

  • Grew up in Prague, capital of Czech Republic
  • Born into a Jewish middle class family
  • Extremely smart
  • Very good relationship with mother but struggled against father
  • Father was a bit of a tyrant
  • Mother tried to understand him
  • Characters in stories based off his personal life
  • Stormy love life - engaged, broke up, got back together, then he found a new love and stayed with her until he died
  • Much more popular and well-known after his death in 1924 of tuberculosis

Theme Statement

Are any of the characters repressing any of their true urges, dreams or goals?

What is the significance of Gregor turning into a life-sized beetle?

The novella "Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka examines the unconscious desires of the individual in the family unit that is driven by the oedipus complex and the desire for self pleasure.

Father: repressed any goals he ever had until his son changed into a bug and he was forced to support his family

Mother: repressed the urge to hate her son in the bug form

Gregor: repressed the urge to go after his mother and hate his father by putting everything into his work

Grete: repressed the goal to go to the observatory

Where/when in the story do we see characters acting on the pleasure principle?

Psycoanalytic Evidence from Sources

Father presents the superego that represses Gregors desires

revealed through punishment

can create guilt in an individual

conscious and unconscious

he’s in an unconscious state throughout

imagery: cold, unfeeling, dark place, stormy, rainy, foggy

longings and desires are unconscious feelings

Freud: all images whose length exceeds their diameter are considered as male or phallic symbols. legs are symbol of phallus (power)

phallic stage: legs, oedipus complex, frustration with father

http://isca.in/rjrs/archive/v2/i10/16.ISCA-RJRS-2013-202.pdf

“Gregor was initially submissive towards his father, he was chased back into his room when he tried to escape it.”

http://ahhthreethirty.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/kafkas-the-metamorphosis-with-some-freudian-insight/

"Gregor should have caught the five o'clock train for work as a commercial traveller, that is, a psychic change should have occurrred at the normal age of five, when the first awareness of of a divided or sinful nature usually appears within the formation of the superego" -The American Imago

Sources

Final Points

Barfi, Zahra, Fatemeh Azizmohammadi, and Hamedreza Kohzadi. A Study of Kafka’s the Metamorphosis in the Light of Freudian Psychological Theory. Research Journal of Recent Sciences. N.p., 30 June 2013. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.

Kafka, F. Metamorphosis. Trans. David Wylie. (2002.) Project Gutenberg. 20 May 2012. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5200/

"Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” with Some Freudian insight." Theory 330. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.

Webster, Peter Dow. "Kafka's Metamorphosis As Death and Resurrection Fantasy." The American Imago 16.4 (Winter 1959): 349-365. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Anna Sheets-Nesbitt. Vol. 35. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.

Where This Leads

Conclusion

  • Freud has many critics
  • This is just one way in which to view it
  • These ways really analyze the characters and their intenal and external motivations
  • some are very out-of-this world and seeminly unlikely
  • phallic and oral symbols are used throughout
  • castration: fear of losing masculinity

Questions this view may bring up:

Is every piece of literature actually influenced by this?

Do authors a

Is this stuff really true?

Psychoanalytic Lens of Metamorphosis

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