What Is His Family's Reaction to Gregor Not Unlocking the Door?

"The Layout: Nabokov and Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis"" by Csaba Onder

Csaba Onder, PhD, Dr. habil. is college professor at Eszterhazy Karoly University, Eger, Hungary. His research includes classical Hungarian literature, Hungarian language reform at the turn of the 18th and 19th century and in the start third of the 19th century, as well every bit Ferenc Kölcsey's linguistic work. Email:

Abstract: The text depicting the globe with the tools of absurd generated unpredictable amount of interpretation since its genesis. From the metaphoric, metaphysical, or psychologizing approaches emerges the close reading of the American writer, amateur entomologist, Vladimir Nabokov. Nabokov convincingly demolishes the ingrained prejudices concerning of the famous first judgement of the brusk story, that the metamorphosed Gregor, as a beetle, tin not be considered as a monstrous verminous bug. The essay gives further consideration to the remark from Nabokov, regarding to the doors, inspired to draw the Samsa-flat. The layout of the flat can exist attempted past the stable doors, existence e'er in the same place. The bounds of the business firm are being arranged around the three doors opening from Gregor's room (like the segments of the problems), which exact cartoon is withal non possible, because the walls and the interiors of the apartment are malleable, synchronous to the metamorphosis of Gregor, they move together with the transformation of the family's relation-arrangement. The deconstruing space in the text conjures the labyrinths hiding monsters, capturing the characters together with the reader into the trap of imagination.

Keywords: Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa, labyrinth, the Samsa apartment

In reading, i should discover and fondle details.
(Nabokov 1980, "Practiced Readers and Good Writers."
Another motto could also be this:
"the good reader is 1 who has imagination, retentivity, a dictionary,
and some artistic sense […] Curiously plenty, one cannot read a volume:
one tin merely reread it. A good reader, a major reader,
an agile and creative reader is a rereader.")

"What insect?"

"He is not, technically, a dung beetle. He is merely a large beetle." (Nabokov 1980, "Franz Kafka [1883–1924]: 'The Metamorphosis' [1915]"). This is how Vladimir Nabokov, the earth-famous emigrant Russian author summarises his observations at one of his American lectures, and, with a knowing smile, he scrutinizes his students who are ardently copying his sketch of a beetle on the blackboard, more precisely, the organism that Gregor Samsa institute himself transformed into on that detail morning. "I must add," he remarks, while trying to wipe the chalk powder off his hand, "that neither Gregor nor Kafka saw that beetle any also clearly."

Nabokov earned his living from giving university lectures at Wellesley College, Cambridge, Massachusetts on Russian language and literature and meanwhile he was studying the structure of lepidoptera genitalia as an entomologist of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. Students attended his English-language lectures on Kafka and his "The Metamorphosis" already at Cornell in his course entitled "The masters of European literature" (See Nabokov 1980, "Introduction by John Updike". Most these years and Nabokov'southward lectures on literature come across: Shapiro, 2003; Dhooge–Pieters, 2017). Nabokov, equally his students subsequently recalled, had a profound sense of irony and during his lectures on Kafka, he continuously encouraged his students to "notice and fondle details" (Ross Wetzsteon'south reminiscences, see Nabokov 1980, "Introduction past John Updike"). Equally he puts it at the beginning of his essay, "If Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, and so I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of adept and corking readers." Starting from this assumption, he sets out to examine the correspondences between fantasy and reality, and to construct Gregor Samsa's body:

Now what exactly is the 'vermin' into which poor Gregor, the seedy commercial traveler, is so suddenly transformed? It obviously belongs to the branch of 'jointed leggers' (Arthropoda), to which insects, and spiders, and centipedes, and crustaceans vest. If the 'numerous little legs' mentioned in the beginning hateful more than six legs, so Gregor would not be an insect from a zoological point of view. Just I advise that a man enkindling on his back and finding he has as many as six legs vibrating in the air might feel that 6 was sufficient to exist called numerous. We shall therefore assume that Gregor has half-dozen legs, that he is an insect.

Next question: what insect? Commentators say cockroach, which of form does non make sense. A cockroach is an insect that is flat in shape with large legs, and Gregor is anything but flat: he is convex on both sides, belly and back, and his legs are small. He approaches a cockroach in just ane respect: his coloration is brown. That is all. Apart from this he has a tremendous convex abdomen divided into segments and a hard rounded dorsum suggestive of wing cases. In beetles these cases conceal flimsy little wings that can be expanded and then may carry the beetle for miles and miles in a blundering flying. Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the difficult covering of his back. (This is a very overnice observation on my function to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do non know that they have wings.) Further, he has potent mandibles. He uses these organs to plough the central in a lock while standing erect on his hind legs, on his third pair of legs (a potent little pair), and this gives u.s.a. the length of his torso, which is almost iii feet long. In the course of the story he gets gradually accustomed to using his new appendages – his feet, his feelers. This brown, convex, dog-sized beetle is very broad. I should imagine him to wait like this: (Nabokov 1980, "Franz Kafka [1883–1924]: 'The Metamorphosis' [1915]")

Well, what does then the epitome of the beetle on the blackboard, as Nabokov visualises it, teach us? Evidently, first of all, that "If one begins with a readymade generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book earlier i has started to understand it." (Nabokov 1980, "Proficient Readers and Good Writers"). The emergence of the rather overloaded, chiefly metaphysical-metaphorical or psychological-biographical, generalizing interpretations of "The Metamorphosis" are due to the unquestionable absurdity of the beginning of the story. Because of the absurdity of Gregor's body, showing both entomological and anthropological features, information technology cannot go the object of accurate and detailed scrutiny. Kafka "fervently objected" to the representation of applesauce, that is, the showing or drawing the body itself: in response to the embrace plan of Kurt Wolff's publishing house, he refused "to allow the cover designer to try to stand for the metamorphosed protagonist in whatever way in its entirety" (Györffy 1987, 143; Kafka 2011, 114-116). It is not accidental that the visual representation of Gregor's transformed body was subject to prohibition. It is no coincidence either that the text of the story provides innumerable details as to Gregor'south metamorphosed torso. As the Hungarian translator puts information technology, "these details, leaving a deep impression, do not eventually organise themselves into a whole, and the minor contradictions blur even the fuzzy sensation created by the work" (Györffy 1987, 143). It might seem the contradictions hidden in the details inspire the readers' imagination to perform continuous, unsettling, self-questioning and adaptive work regarding Gregor Samsa's body and its visualisation. In this example, the details do not help reconstruction, the contradictory details exercise not point out the contingency of narration, but rather serve to produce the paradigm of the advisable "vermin." The aversive homo fantasy here has endless possibilities. Kafka, ultimately, did non desire Samsa's body to have a visible course for the reader, which could have laid the trap of fix-fabricated generalisations. That is probably why he gives ample space for the readers' disgust and fantasy work with the "modest" inconsistencies of the text. Nabokov's drawing of Gregor Samsa's body on the blackboard of the lecture hall, therefore, cannot exist exact, but rather demonstrative and provocative in its aim. He would have liked to brainwash his students into good readers and show, as an entomologist, that the protagonist's torso was far from that of a "gigantic insect" (Kafka 1971, 89. Run into "Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt;" Kafka 1990, 82; literally "a monstrous vermin") every bit his relatives regarded him or the way readers might imagine him. Gregor'southward transformed insect body can indeed be concretised, though representation is still impossible. "I should imagine him to look similar this," Nabokov says and his slightly exaggerating remark ("neither Gregor nor Kafka saw that protrude any too clearly"), ultimately, proves to be true. Gregor could not see this body precisely, mainly due to his altered vision, Kafka, on the other hand, did not let either his designer or his narrator see him and so that nobody could do the same.

Before cartoon conclusions about the possibilities of liberating reader imagination and asking our questions about Gregor embodied in metaphysical and psychological interpretations, I would similar to finish the story in a different way. In his lecture about Kafka, Nabokov must have touched upon the question of the arrangement of rooms in the Samsa household, just as he devotes several passages to the office of doors, their opening and closing in "The Metamorphosis," a motif that penetrates the whole narrative. In spite of this, we do not go to know why exactly doors are important in this story. Nabokov draws a sketch of the beetle on the blackboard, as he imagines it, then, with a cunning grinning, he asks the students to attempt to envision the arrangement of rooms at the Samsa's and requite an reply to the central theme of the opening and closing of doors. Nabokov with this homework consignment or clue, not defective a sense of self-irony, is obviously being provocative. The minute details of his lectures (and novels) hateful a serious hermeneutic challenge for the piece of work of readers. There are no accidental details fifty-fifty in his lecture. Re-reading Kafka's text only with this intention of the lecture does it go obvious that for the entomologist Nabokov, the flat, the room, in which Gregor and his family lived, had proved to be just as important and meaningful as the insect body of Samsa. And when trying to reconstruct the insect-like layout of the flat, he was dissatisfied with the result.

"What apartment?"

"This flat, a flat in an apartment house, in Charlotte Street to be exact, is divided into segments as he will be divided himself." (Nabokov 1980, "Franz Kafka (1883–1924): 'The Metamorphosis' (1915)". – What is the significant of: equally he volition be?) Nabokov summarises the chief themes of the story in 3 points: in explaining the central significance of number 3; the theme of opening and closing of doors that runs through the whole story (which he does not fully explicate); and the permanently commented ups and downs of Gregor and the Samsa family. He analyses the three-role story also in three sections, dividing the main parts into scenes or segments. It seems that Gregor's segmented body, comprising of the entomological trinity of head – thorax – abdomen, is also the basis of Nabokov's understanding of the flat'due south layout. However, he can non draw it this way. Nabokov's layot of the Samsa flat does not refer to triple segments. (See this layout sketch in the beginning edition in 1980 of his lectures in Nabokov 1980; this edition includes reproductions of Nabokov's marked up opening page from his teaching copy, his sketch of the layout of the Samsa flat, ii drawings of a protrude, and his notes on the triad theme). It seems that the apartment is at least equally opposed to the representation every bit Gregor'southward beetle trunk.

Nabokov's estimation is unique in the literature on Kafka. As one of his critics writes:

Equally helpful are Nabokov's illustrations of rooms and doors and his comments almost where the family members are situated at varius times. Throught Gregor'south perspective, readers find out how the physical appearances of the family members change and what spaces they occupy in he flat […]. To ascertain the family's reactions to Gregor, the readers must activate their ain visualizing capacities to a far greater caste. Nabakov, to my knowledge, is the only person who has emphasized that Gregor is ever in a different spot when family fellow member see him. (Sinka 2008, 149–150)

In the following, as an obedient and proficient reader, I would like to ask the questions inspired by Nabokov: What sort of flat is this? What do the doors bear witness?

Later on this lecture that keeps touching upon the motif of doors only does non elaborate on them and entrusts the readers to determine their office, information technology would exist most unfortunate to accept a disquisitional opinion based on metaphysics or psychology and work on the metaphorical theme of isolation and openness, because in this case, we are not going to pay attention to the flat or the doors as they are, just what they by and large mean for the states. So what interests the states now is exactly Gregor'south room, the apartment of the Samsa family, the space in which they live and the way Gregor moves in this space.

Gregor's body is indeed segmented, and the three primary parts, like the iii main segments are obvious. But let us not forget, as Nabokov himself points it out, that neither Gregor nor Kafka (every bit a narrator and, consequently, the reader neither) can see the insect precisely. One mode of limiting the vision, every bit has already been mentioned, is the disproportionate size of the beetle, given the points of reference provided by the objects in the flat and the uncovering of the contradictions arising from this comparison. The altering, hardly fixable characteristics of the insect body business concern both the torso and the flat equally well. (This may refer to Nabokov's "equally he will be.") What happens if Gregor Samsa'due south flat corresponds to the altered body of his?

Allow us attempt to depict the layout of the Samsa flat on the footing of the text. In that location is three of everything in Kafka's story. 1 of the first signs of this, which later gains significance, is the iii doors in Gregor'southward room. "His room, a regular homo bedroom, only rather too pocket-sized, lay placidity between the 4 familiar walls." (Kafka 1971, 89.) Lying on his back, Gregor looks around in this familiar infinite, where there is a table, a picture above information technology, a window, a nightstand and a bed. Gregor's mother knocks at the door "backside the head of his bed" (Kafka 1971, 91), and not much later, his male parent is knocking "at one of the side doors" (Kafka 1971, 92). "At the other side door" his sister is getting anxious, and he "answered them both at once: 'I'yard merely gear up'" (Kafka 1971, 92). Before cartoon a sketch of Gregor's room, permit us have a look at the other parts of the flat.

Gregor's room is surrounded by three other ones and each room has a door. The three family members are speaking to him through three different doors, from three different directions. The caput of his bed is at the door communicating with the living room, where his mother was knocking, then the chief clerk begins to speak "in the adjacent room to the left" (Kafka 1971, 95), meanwhile Grete is whispering to him "from the right-hand room" (Kafka 1971, 95) then they communicate with each other through Gregor's room. When Gregor is pushing a chair towards the door (Kafka 1971, 100), this is the double door that links his room with the living room. The opening of that door (together with the revelations of several other things) is as well the manifestation of Gregor'due south new vision, a wholly different perspective. Leaning "against the within of the firmly shut wing of the door," "his caput bending sideways" (Kafka 1971, 100) he can simultaneously see the facade of the infirmary on the other side of the street, the breakfast dishes in the living room, a photograph of himself on the opposite wall, and since "the door leading to the hall was open up, and one could come across that the front door stood open too," he tin can as well see "the landing beyond and the beginning of the stairs going down" (Kafka 1971, 101).

It is mayhap needless to point out that Gregor does not run into all this looking around, but from the door connecting his room with the living room all at once. This perspective is made possible by the eyes at both sides of his caput. This perspective is of import because this imaginary axis of vision is going to serve as the ground for Gregor'southward movement between his room and the living room. The double doors, from which this revelation took place, is going to remain at the same place in the later sections of the text as a kind of origin of a coordinate organization, similarly to the side doors that do not change positions either. The confusion starts when the lodgers arrive, due to whom the family unit must alter the previous system of the apartment. They rent one of the rooms, and unnecessary objects find their way into Gregor's room (Kafka 1971, 128) only information technology is not entirely articulate where that room is that they take and where that room actually was so far. Before, 1 had a definite impression that the Samsa flat consisted of three bedrooms, a living room and an foyer. Every bit a part of the new system, the kitchen is added where the family retreats to (Kafka 1971, 129) and its relation to the living room and the entrance hall. "The three gentlemen," who rent the room (who, therefore, live in the same room and eat in the kitchen), listen to Grete playing the violin at the hall door (Kafka 1971, 129) and then invite the family into the living room. When Gregor appears, "[the father] hurried toward them and, spreading put his arms, tried to urge them back into their ain room and at the same time block their view of Gregor." (Kafka 1971, 131.) That ways that the lodgers' room is connected with the living room. The possible location of the new rooms is marked with a cleaved line.

The Samsa flat must accept been somewhat like to Gregor's narrow homo room. Gregor'south body was transformed overnight dramatically, but clearly this is only the starting time stage of a larger procedure: the trunk and the relationship system to the body is continuously transforming throughout the whole story. Gregor's room significantly alters in every sense, and it seems that parallel with this, the whole human space of the flat is also altered. The ground of the triadic organization mentioned by Nabokov is probably the three doors leading to Gregor's bedroom. While these doors are stable during the story (only their opening and endmost are significant), Gregor's room and the whole flat changes virtually unnoticeably and becomes malleable. If the division of Gregor's body is felt but not seen "too conspicuously." To be more exact: our attempt to describe the entomological structure of the insect precisely is doomed to fail just as if we effort to describe the apartment either poetically or logically. The layout of the Samsa apartment, in fact, cannot be drawn. The walls and rooms tin can inappreciably be fitted into a regular rectangle. Only the doors are fixed, and if we want to take an prototype of the apartment, it tin only be acquired through the doors. The apartment moves with Gregor and changes together with the family. One tin discover the unnoticeable distortion, rearrangement and deformation of the flat. While nosotros are abhorred to imagine the horrid body of Gregor, we lose our way in the labyrinth of his flat. Kafka'south existent monsters are backside airtight doors. These doors limit the clarity of vision, giving space to monstrous imagination and lethal indifference.

WORKS CITED

• Dhooge, Ben – Pieters, Jürgen, eds. 2017. Portraits of the Artist as Reader and Teacher: Vladimir Nabokov's Lectures on Literature. Leiden: Brill.
• Györffy, Miklós. 1987. "Kafka: Az átváltozás", in Boccacciótól Salingerig. Novellaértelmezések, ed. Szávai János. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó. 136−147
• Kafka, Franz. 1971. "The Metamorphosis," Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. The Consummate Stories. Edited by Nahum North. Glatzer with a foreword by John Updike. New York: Schocken Books. 89–139.
• Kafka, Franz. 1990.A fűtő. Az átváltozás. Elbeszélések. Die Heizer. Die Verwandlung. Erzählungen, Trans. Györffy, Miklós, Budapest: Európa Könyvkiadó. 82–221. Showtime releases: Die Verwandlung. In: Die Weißen Blätter. Eine Monatsschrift, ed. René Schickele. "Jg. 2" (1915), "H. ten" (October), 1177–1230. Die Verwandlung. Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1915.
• Kafka, Franz. 2011. Letters to Friends, Family unit and Editors. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston, [first published 1975], London: Oneworld Classics.
• Nabokov, Vladimir. 1980. Lectures on Literature, Edited by Fredson Bowers, with an introduction by John Updike. New York: Harcourt Caryatid Jovanovich. "Introduction by John Updike," xvii–xxvii; "Practiced Readers and Good Writers," i–6; "Franz Kafka (1883–1924): 'The Metamorphosis' (1915)," 251–283.
• Shapiro, Gavriel, ed. 2003. Nabokov at Cornell. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Sinka, Margit. 2008. „Kafka's Metamorphosis and the Search for Significant in Twentieth-Century German literature," in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. New Edition, ed. Bloom, Harold. New York: Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations. 145–154.

The author'southward enquiry was supported past the grant EFOP-three.6.1-16-2016-00001 ("Complex improvement of research capacities and services at Eszterhazy Karoly University").

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Source: http://americanaejournal.hu/vol14no1/onder

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