1. The illustrations do not protray Gregor in a very grotesque way. The fact that Gregor is drawn with a human head greatly takes away from his transformation and undermines my original picture of him. I don't think that Kafka ever intended for Gregor to be part human and part bug. If Gregor did still have a human head in Metamorphosis, the family would probably not have been as disgusted by his appearance and then would have been more likely to talk to him. The illustrations are in black and white to make everything seem more primitive, depressing, and to represent the two dimensional characters in the story.
4. The faces of the family are caricatures like Gregor and they actually appear more grotesque to me than Gregor's face does. Perhaps this is meant to reflect their inner personalities, of which Gregor's is the most considerate.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Heart of Darkness and Metamorphosis
Gregor's ridiculous and unrealistic reaction to his to transformation is due to the society that he lives in and the life he has been trained to live. Gregor has been raised to conform to his society and he has lived every day in a robotic routine dictated by the society that has never been broken. Therefore, he doesn't know how to react when something happens to him that isn't controlled by his society. Furthermore, he has neglected his own personal needs for so long and essentially been an ant, with his only purpose being his work. So while his body was human, his mind was like a bug. But now, his body has turned into a bug and, although his mind is still thinking like a bug who has to work, he is unable to control basic movement of his legs, meaning that his mind is rebelling.
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