The Metamorphosis and Brave New World
Uploaded by JSpeedRacr06 on Jan 05, 2005
At first glance, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World seem pretty much irrelevant to each other, except for their classification as Modern novels. For example, The Metamorphosis deals with a man, Gregor Samsa, who awakes one day transformed into a giant insect and the effects (and repercussions) of the transformation on those around Gregor. Brave New World, on the other hand, deals with the looming threat of the future while showing what is already, or will become, wrong, morally and otherwise, in the present and future. However, both texts have something in common. This linking factor is the manipulation of language, as in the inclusion of specific details, sentence structure, and diction, by both authors in their narration, and sometimes in their dialogue, to create a satire about the fact that the world has become heartless, monotonous, and robotic, with little or no consideration towards actual human life.
In the very beginning of The Metamorphosis, Kafka exhibits several ideas: he uses a great deal of pronouns in place of Gregor’s name, which creates a sense of ambiguity and anonymity, such as when “he wanted to leave…but…he hadn’t seen yet and…he couldn’t…at the moment.”, (Kafka 14) to show that humans become faceless as they begin to adapt to the new world order; Kafka also uses a syntactical style known as a ‘freight train’ as Gregor “lay on his back, which was hard as armor, and, when he lifted his head, he saw, his belly…was just barely perched” (Kafka 11). While the connection seems somewhat obscure, Kafka uses this syntactical device to convey a sense of desolation because it seems that society has begun to go down a one-way track, so to speak, with little hope of stopping. Also, Kafka includes a connotative statement when Gregor exclaims, “My God, what a strenuous profession I’ve chosen!”(Kafka 11). The connotations of the phrase “My God”, exclamatory and somewhat cursing a situation, in addition to the statement “…what a strenuous profession I’ve chosen,” convey a sense of irony because Gregor shows even more concern about his work, and his line of work, than he conveys for his own physical predicament (possessing the physical and mental characteristics of an insect), which conveys that since Gregor has been following the same exact routine for so long, that routine eventually becomes the only thing that Gregor knows: work.
In the beginning of Brave...