Is Metamorphosis a fundamentally marxist text?

Not necessarily, but it is anti-work which makes it conducive to a Marxist lens. It's about telling your family you want to become an artist

>marxism
>/pol/

What makes you think this? Just because they think that society should be more of a collective yadda yadda yadda doesn't mean they believe in a soul. You saying Hinduism is socialist? Ha, no.

it's not a soul in a literal sense anyway. it's just a word that suffices to explain the human will.

this ^^^

Why do you always isolate white people? They do it to everyone.

it's a meme

Could one describe Metamorphosis as... kafkaesque?

ah, monsieur...

Is OP fundamentally a faggot?

Yes, of course. The main character starves to death.

It is, in my opinion, more of a Foster-Wallachian text

seconded

I also read somewhere that it was a metaphor for someone who decides to become an artist

Not really, no. Kafkaesque refers to the ridiculous bureaucracy in The Trial.

Based on the work of Luce Irigaray, Freud and Frantz Fanon, I can confirm that it is a decolonial feminist text. The struggle of Gregor to stand up straight obviously is an ironic reference to phallic discourse, and the efforts of his sister to help him articulate a Lacanian critique of traditional cisgendernormative value patterns. The reaction of the official authorities acts as a symbol for a fundamental deconstruction of Donald Trump's transgender discrimination. The way people take interest in Samsa's appearance must appear familiar to everyone who has some knowledge regarding the approach to orientalism and cultural appropriation furthered by Edward Said and Achille Mbembe. See also: jstor.org/stable/3174406

>Far-left and global capitalist whites flood non-whites into white countries, societies and neighborhoods
>Blacks murder whites en masse in Africa
>Whites are the ones keeping people separate
If only

I think Kafkaesque means senseless and unjust treatment of the individual by systems in society.

The film "Bicycle Thieves" has a perfect example of a kafkaesque story;
A very poor man sacrifices his possessions to get a bike required for his job. The bike is stolen. The culprit gets away with it while the robbed man is treated with hostility by everyone he asks for help. Finally in his desperation he tries to steal a bike himself, but the whole of the city immediately gangs up to apprehend him with ease.

In a kafkaesque nightmare, the rules of society/life don't work for the individual while they work for everyone else, and the individual is treated with mistrust and hostility when he is blameless

Kafka definitely liked beurocratic failings as a manifestation of this kind of injustice, but it is only one manifestation of "kafkaesque"

That sounds like a more appropriate definition of it than mine.

Very good post, this is why I come to Veeky Forums

Not really.
I'm not sure why marxists believe alienation wouldn't exist outside of capitalism. There's always gonna be cunts in the world.

Not really. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Kafkaesque
Did you read The Trial yesterday for the first time in your life?

>merriam-webster

the 13 colonies were a mistake

>In a kafkaesque nightmare, the rules of society/life don't work for the individual while they work for everyone else.

Not really. In The Trial Josef meets other people who are in his situation.

Pic sauce?

How you guys arrive to those conclusions? I guess I'm to dumb too read.

For me it was a dumb book about a guy becoming a bug and his stupid sister crying and not understanding how difficult it was for him to be a cockroach. And some jews that stay at the hotel.

Well it's a beautiful work but also Kafka's easiest.
Yeah you may be dumb.

you see, gregor actually represents syria and his metamorphosis is a metaphor predicting the rise of isis

i read it when i was a 17 year old brainlet years ago and basically felt the same way. i agree that it is a beautiful work, the prose was what kept me in it even though i didnt know wtf was going on.

For some reason this is the best discussion thread today. Maybe it's because many people here have actually read The Metamorphosis unlike other books

No. In fact the predicaments of exploitation in Kafka's texts are completely anti-socialist. Let me explain: socialism takes particular exploitations and projects them onto world-wide (ie universal) struggles, whereas Kafka's writings are more or less about how universalistic societies overlook the important particulars in the world. If Kafka was a socialist, he wouldn't have written Metamorphosis, because socialists don't see exploitation or alienation as openings for artistic creation, but rather as openings for political emancipation and revolution.

Many of us were forced to read this jewish claptrap in high school, along with other jewish claptrap that gets brought up on here a lot like Catcher in the Rye.

kafka is actually close to individualism than marxism

i'm a bug

It's about gayness and how hard was to come out in those days.

>mfw it's a real text

im a marxist and i love kafka but no

trips of truth

yes in that it and marxism are shit

I hope you know that both of your opinions are wrong.

I hope you die you limpwristed pinko queer but hoping for it doesn't make it so.

I hope you are forced by the devil to read Das Kapital in hell you dirty Slovenian pig

I take it back. what I said was mean. Please accept my apology

>There's always gonna be cunts in the world.
Marx was refering to XIXth century capitalism, during the industrial revolution, where men that used to be skilled butchers, bakers, farmers, shoemakers, became one tiny part of the chain of production in big factories, where they were deprived from the satisfaction of making things themselves. See "Modern Times" by Chaplin, a perfect illustration of that type of alienation.

It wasn't about all alienation, though there was the hope that owning the means of production would restore more freedom.

I have other interpretation but I REALLY like this one.
Don't listen to him user. Metamorphosis is somehow like a poem, I heard there are like a hundred coherent interpretations. We'll never reach the 'real' meaning behind Metamorphosis, but we can arrive to the best 'theory' that explains the text. Just read slower, think about the text and re-read if needed (the same thing you do with a poem).
t. native speaker.

It's not even a 100 pages, I guess that's doable for some of the board

second this

its also transgender, the bug has no defined sex

That was a right-pretty speech, sir. But I ask you, what is kafkaesque? Webster's defines it as "a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality." Which is complex!

bump

No, pretty sure it had to do with Kafka's view of himself, his desire to become an artist, and how he felt his family would feel about that

kek

You're all literally taking a shit on Kafka

Kek

I like your definition a lot

...

Anything can be fundamentally marxist with the appropiate amount of mental gymnastics.

I never got that at all, it seems more opposed to overwork or anything, which I guess you could say is opposed to unbridled capitalism in a way and pro-Marxism in one very specific regard, but you'd have to read into it pretty far IMO to get that from it. To my knowledge Kafka never had any Marxist tendencies or anything, did he?

It's a story about the repressed alienation that is inherent in all of us, and how society reacts to expressions of it. Through a very extreme case. The "artist coming out" analysis purposed here is interesting, but I feel like it's just building a narrative around a more abstract message.

Metamorphosis has some parallels with Marxists thought in the way it portrays capitalist society, especially the reduction of the individual to his productivity, but I can confidently say the element of "society" in Kafka's writings is wide and essential. Every society creates its norms, requires a certain lifestyle from its subjects, carries emotional weights in the shape of family and friends, Kafka just wrote Gregor into a specific capitalist society.

I always thought Kafkaesque just meant "with a twist"

It used to, anyway.