Like a play, The Metamorphosis takes place entirely in small rooms like stage sets, and the action builds through discrete episodes buildings toward a climax. The dominant symbols of the story also reflect those of Gordin's play. All the characters of Kafka's story find their origins in the Savage One Gregor's counterpart in the play is the idiot son who is unable to communicate with his family and stays locked in his room for fear of his father. Kafka wrote about the play extensively in his diaries, and it is clear that he used the play as a model for his story. This idea had to take some form, and found it in a Yiddish play, Gordin's The Savage One. This is exactly the image he gave us in The Metamorphosis. The insect, Kafka's metaphor for his writing self removed from the everyday world, was no longer a beautiful thing, but a repulsive and filthy one. It was as if he had let out the story in a perfect form, but now realized that it was covered with "filth and slime." Writing, when it springs from within, is like giving birth, and the child is covered in mucus. He wrote in his diary that the writing flowed smoothly and that this is the only true way to write, with "a complete opening out of the body and soul." Reading the proofs for the story a little later, Kafka found himself disappointed by the imperfections in the story. In September Kafka wrote "The Judgment," possibly his most autobiographical story ever, in a single sitting. He imagined his body moving around in the world while his true writing self remained behind in the form of a beautiful beetle. The idea of writing about an insect appears in Kafka's writing as early as 1907, while he held on to his idealism with regard to the writing process. As a result, the reader is forced to look for deeper meanings within the story. The style seems to ground the story in reality, cutting off any possibility of its having been a dream, and yet the story itself is of an impossible occurrence. It was common for Kafka to present an impossible situation, such as a man's transformation into an insect, and develop the story from there with perfect realism and intense attention to detail. The style of the book epitomizes Kafka's writing. Yet after having written the story, Kafka criticized its imperfections, reserving his harshest remarks for the ending and insisting that it was "unreadable." Ironically, the story ends on an optimistic note, as the family puts itself back together. To this, Kafka replied, "plenty of hope, for God? only not for us." This vision of human beings trapped in a hopeless world never leaves Kafka's writing, and it is present in The Metamorphosis, where Gregor's only option, in the end, is to die. Brod asked whether there was hope elsewhere in the universe. Speaking with his friend Max Brod, Kafka once explained that he thought human beings were God's nihilistic thoughts. Kafka's views of humanity found their origins in his idiosyncratic religious views, lying somewhere outside the mainstream of Judaism. The actual conditions of his life, especially his family life, are certainly a model for the family interactions of the novel, and the form of the story comes from Kafka's watching of a play. To shed some light on the driving themes, we should make a brief examination of Kafka's life, his beliefs, and his ideas on writing. The novel is clearly highly autobiographical in its content. The writing process on this novel was laborious, taking three weeks in November and December, and the final product turned out to be the longest work Kafka ever completed in his life. Finally, The Metamorphosis appeared in print in 1915, after Kafka asked a publisher to put it out in a very unusual display of concern for publication. A year later he sent the book to a friend who was prevented from publishing it by his conservative editors. In 1913 he turned down an offer to publish the story, possibly because he was saving it for a book he was planning called Sons. It was one of fairly few works Kafka was to publish in his lifetime. Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis in 1912, the year he felt his creativity finally taking a definite form.
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