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Existentialism In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis

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The text “One day in the life on ivan densiovich” takes place during such time in Russia when the government was run by Stalin, known for his trynnanical tendencies. Stalin was organizing programs which would enforce usage of machinery for development instead of old fashioned collectivization of agriculture.Millions were displaced and deprived of their lands. Those who resisted were sent to labor camps. In which one of these camps Shukhov was sent to due to resisting to enforce new methods of production as he believed it was lacking creativity since all of the designs of the carpets which were being produced where the same which would make it boring for them to work on. As shukhov thought of work as faith as he thinks praying is worthless …show more content…

This seems to be a logical place to start an account of a typical day in such a camp, but we must remember that several masterpieces of modern literature use the same technique for their opening scene. In Franz Kafka's enigmatic existentialist novel The Trial, the protagonist Josef K. awakens to find himself being arrested for having committed a crime which is never explained. In Kafka's story The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa awakens from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic, odious insect3 , without ever finding out explicitly for what reason. Other authors place their protagonists into this state between sleep and waking, where the character and the readers have difficulty deciding whether or not the events to follow are a dream or …show more content…

At this level of meaning, the work aligns itself with those of other existential writers who see human beings trapped in a monotonous daily routine very similar to that of Ivan's labor camp (see the essay on "One Day as an Existential Commentary"). This impression is reinforced by the use of numbers instead of names -Ivan is called S-854 by the Thin Tartar — a technique used by many modern writers; for example, it is used by Elmer Rice in his play The Adding Machine, and by Karel Capek in R. U.R. Interestingly, Solzhenitsyn had originally chosen the title S-854 for the

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