It is easy to relate this quote to the tenants of existentialism and the belief that we are responsible for creating meaning in our own lives. In this quote, Kafka is expressing his beliefs about the complexity of the human mind, personality, and habit. Although none of her letters survive, he provides insight into his relationship with her and his broader relationship with himself. A human being, after all, is not made up of single pieces, from which a single piece can be taken out and replaced by something else.Īfter his death, a book of letters that Franz Kafka wrote to one of his fiancés, Felice Bauer, was published. One cannot change them, one can merely disturb their balance. One has either to take people as they are, or leave them as they are. He is entirely alienated from his family and every other element of his previous life. he is moved by his sister’s music and is trying to take that as a sign that he’s not as inhuman as he appears to be. It’s a battle that he’s doomed to lose as no one else, much less himself, can understand what’s going on inside him. He is trying to come to terms with who he is and what he is. These moving lines from ‘The Metamorphosis’ get to the heart of the human condition and Gregor’s fight for and against it. Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light. There is nothing he could’ve done or said to convince them that he had done nothing wrong. Without reason, the priest tells K that he can interpret his suit in the way he speaks. In this scene of the novel, a very Orwellian explanation is given. The novel describes the arrest of a man, Josef K., for an unstated crime. But, lucky for modern readers, it was not. ‘The Trial’, like all of his other unfinished manuscripts, was supposed to be burned. This exchange of dialogue comes from ‘The Trial’, an unfinished novel that was published after Kafka’s death (against the direction of his will). How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak. One of Kafka’s major themes.īut I’m not guilty,” said K. This quote, which is one of the light parts of ‘The Hunger Artist’ depicts the isolated nature of the artist. The crowd nor those entering into the profession understand it. No one knows what it is like to be a hunger artist, to succeed at one’s art, and to do so easily. This quote, which comes from Kafka’s ‘The Hunger Artist,’ describes from the artist’s perspective how easy it is to starve oneself. He did not keep this fact a secret, but no one believed him. There is no reason or explanation behind his transformation, just a new and unusual kind of suffering.įor he alone, and no other initiate, knew how easy it was to starve. On top of that is the pointlessness of the entire situation. He still feels the pangs of human emotions, the desire to take care of his family, a passion for his sister’s music, and the guilt of not being able to provide for them, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He knows there is no way that his condition, that of being inhuman and human at the same time, can possibly be conveyed to any other person. Here, Gregor is considering his plight, that of being transformed into a giant insect. These three sentences come from Kafka’s best-known novel, ‘The Metamorphosis’. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me.
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