Sisyphus Shrugged:
Symbolic Alienation in The Metamorphosis
The grotesque world is -- and is non -- our give world. The ambiguous way in which we are affected by it results from our awareness that the known and apparently harmonious world is alienated under the impact of abysmal forces, which break it up and transgress its coherence.
-- Wolfgang Kayser
Modernity has added irony to injury. The study of the humanities is intended to bridge something ineluctable in the human condition: the fundamental alienation of the individual. The astute reader of literature will gradu solelyy grow familiar with the unifying substance that binds peoples of all times and cultures. Joseph Campbell, quite famed for his work in mythology, says that storytelling is the secret opening through which the straight-out energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation (3). Apparently, it is through our (that is, mankinds) use of symbols that we tap our humanity, and our universal experience. When symbolic imagery is used, whether or not it is used consciously, it is an appeal to dream, and thus an appeal to the mental fabric that we all share. Of course, thats the way its supposed to be. Existentialism, nihilism, and Marxism are all viable alternative philosophies that celebrate, if a nihilist can be said to celebrate anything at all, in mans alienation.
These darker, strikingly upstart philosophies are well applied to The Metamorphosis, though a formalised approach to the books symbols does in fact help illustrate their themes.
Gregor Samsa does not fit conveniently fit Campbells archetype of the hero. The reason for this should be clear: Gregor is not a typical hero. He is or else the unwilling, perhaps unwitting antihero in an absurd circus that is the ripe world. Gregors world, as well as the world of many existentialists, exists...
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