Siddartha Chapters 1-6 Reflection

Thus far in Siddartha, it can be easily seen that Siddartha is a person of conviction. When he gets an idea, he is one-hundred percent behind it and follows it until another idea comes along. For example, one day, basically out of the blew, Siddartha decides he wants to become a Samana. He will not be deterred and waits, standing, outside his father's house all night, until he is blessed. The same goes for when he finally quits his Samana group to seek out the Buddha, and when he refuses to become one of The Sublime One's followers. All of these decisions are stemmed from his insatiable spirit. He learns the ways of many groups very quickly. So quickly, in fact, he gets bored with one thing and must move on in an attempt to find some spiritual fulfillment. This can come across as arrogant in some parts, though. For instance, Siddartha, after hearing but one of Buddha's 'teaching sessions,' he says that he has learned everything he can from the Buddha, who is the only one in the world who has actually achieved what Siddartha is seeking. But he thinks this is the wrong way to handle it, and so moves on.

Another characteristic I have observed of Siddartha is a sort of forgetfulness. He is forgetful in the way that he throws previous convictions aside in new situations. There are two prime examples of this. One is when he completely swears off of desire and the senses, but then not much later he uses his senses, and feels desire. The diction of the author makes this very noticeable, and a bit annoying, as Siddartha seems to be one who doesn't back up one's words. He becomes not credible (not incredible) because of this, in my mind. The other example, is how, right after his encounter with the Sukyamuni, he declares that he will not be dragged down by any teachers or doctrines. He will be his own teacher and pupil. Yet once he comes to the city, he actively seeks out Kamala as a teacher. Siddartha, still young and a bit childish (which Siddartha calls all normal people in the world), jumps around through conflicting ideas very often. He wants to be abnormal, more spiritual, but he is not there yet. He is a "flip-flopper" right now and needs to settle into a single goal. I predict this will happen, but it will be interesting to see what pushes him to the final stage of his journey. And once, we get there, Siddartha might be looking for a completely different thing than he is right now.

Race to Death

Fables are very simple. For this reason, they have endured throughout time and many, many have been written. All fables teach a lesson, possibly without the reader noticing at all; in that way they are profound. Now that these silly little stories have reached the modernist age of literature, authors like Franz Kafka have taken it to the next level. These modernists try to decode the nature and purpose of, not life, but living life. Kafka, following his modernist movement, wrote an existential fable that follows the life of a former person turned verminous bug. Through his Metamorphosis, Kafka explains and warns of today's society and implies ways of correcting this through self-fulfillment. Although many readers do not understand the purpose of this piece, once deciphered, Metamorphosis is simply a fable with existential lessons and warnings applied to society, written through a modernist lens.

In Kafka's modernist era, it was clear to see how mundane the lives of many had become. The dreary lifestyle focused completely on work and money had taken over. Gregor, living in the time, was the same way. His mom says, "'The young man has nothing in his head except business. I’m almost angry that he never goes out in the evening. Right now he’s been in the city eight days, but he’s been at home every evening'" (Kafka 4). This fretwork is no real way to live life. The existential phrase that goes behind this is, Everybody dies, but not everybody lives. The goal of life is not to simply to exist, but to live a meaningful life not by society's standards, but the self's. Gregor is caught in this system of social responsibilities and is content with it, even though he shouldn't be. His passiveness is evident in the story and universally disdained by most readers. "Once I’ve got together the money to pay off my parents’ debt to him—that should take another five or six years—I’ll do it for sure. Then I’ll make the big break" (Kafka 1). These years, by modernist and existential standards are being wasted away, and they are willingly wasted by an unknowing Gregor too ignorant to realize the meaninglessness of his work. Why is life merely a race to death? Humans have accomplished far too much to be stricken with an overwhelming force that tears down the dreams of the people. To be sucked into this system is normal, and can be looked down upon by a third party, but is generally accepted. The annoying issue with Gregor is that he takes on the burden of his parents' debt and entraps himself into the system willingly. His entrapment becomes so deeply rooted, he remains irrationally dedicated to the job even when he is no longer human. "If I didn’t hold back for my parents’ sake, I’d have quit ages ago. I would’ve gone to the boss and told him just what I think from the bottom of my heart" (Kafka 1). Gregor is not living life on account of his parents. The right thing to do here, Kafka is arguing, is to help yourself more than anything. Selflessness is virtuous, but taking it to the point where it infringes on one's own freedom is taking it too far. Focusing on the self is increasingly important as society requires more drones to fall in line. The ignorant ones, like Gregor, are left to simply exist, and to be at the whims of other people. 

Kafka inlays many ideas into Metamorphosis, one of them being the problem of how the self acts in modern society, as Gregor struggles with. Another is how the masses, represented by the family act in society, and many behave selfishly. Gregor's family is widely resented in this story, and understandably so. They lounge around all day, sleep in, take naps, and let Gregor pay off a debt that is theirs. They are leeches, or possibly more accurately, vampires. Vampirism is, as Thomas Foster puts it, "...exploitation in its many forms. Using other people to get what you want. Denying someone else's right to live in the face of our overwhelming demands. Placing our desires, particularly our uglier ones, above the needs of another" (Foster 21). He also says that the less obvious vampires are much more scary and dangerous than the obvious ones. This is Gregor's family. They are vampires and during the story they are sucking his blood and consequently his life right out, up until his death. Thinking of vampires in literature, they only suck to the point where their victims remain alive but infected. The vampires of human society suck and suck, always wanting more, until the resource has dried up completely. More specifically, and applying the family's vampirism again the Foster's piece, the family becomes even more awful when one thinks about the way they treat Gregor especially at the dinner table. Eating food is so basic to humans, so intimate, that it has become very important to the world. "The act of taking food into our bodies is so personal that we really only want to do it with people with we're very comfortable with" (Foster 8). The family is a collective vampire, and throughout the story they reject Gregor from the dinner table, confining him to his prison of a room, while they eat food paid for by Gregor himself. This tells especially Gregor that the family barely cares for him emotionally at all. They have lost all sense of kinship with and love for him and don't regard him as human. Moreover, the vampire that is society chooses the weak as their victims, and Gregor is the poor selfless victim being taken advantaged of and ultimately killed by his own family. "...and [Dracula] tends to focus on beautiful, unmarried women" (Foster 16). Gregor fits this profile by being alluring and beautiful with his financial upside, and he is unprotected. Nobody steps in and tries to retrieve Gregor from the depths of the societal abyss, and the same goes in the real world. It is a dog-eat-dog world, where only the strong survive. This overlaps with the existential meaning; every person has a choice to rid themselves of this and gain a respite in a more self-reflecting world.

Kafka also uses vampires and the dangers of society to create a story of dark humor. This humor is largely based on irony. Many readers do not understand the patently kafkaesque style of humor, but David Foster Wallace does, and he writes a speech, Laughing with Kafka, that tries to explain this interesting, modernist humor. "Kafka's evocations are, rather, unconscious and almost sub-archetypal, the primordial little-kid stuff from which myths derive; this is why we tend to call even his weirdest stories nightmarish rather than surreal" (Wallace 2). Wallace is saying that Kafka's stories are really basic at its core, but some can't see this because they immediately associate his writing with nightmares. Kafka's humor is hard to understand without assistance, but with it, it becomes quite simple. One of Kafka's 'jokes' is the cruel situation of Gregor trapped in his room by his family, unwelcome in the common places, like the dinner table, of the house. "Earlier, when the door had been barred, they had all wanted to come in to him; now, when he had opened one door and when the others had obviously been opened during the day, no one came any more, and now the keys were stuck in the locks on the outside" (Kafka 10). Kafka laughs at this due to its irony; Gregor trapped himself in the woes of society and now all he wants is to be released from his prison of a room, but cannot achieve this goal. He had to be morphed into a bug to escape, but only to a more tangible form of imprisonment that can be more easily understood. Another irony Kafka exposes of Gregor's life in society is his uselessness. "Often he lay there all night long, not sleeping at all, just scratching on the leather for hours at a time. Or he undertook the very difficult task of pushing a chair over to the window" (Kafka 13). As a bug, Gregor sits around all day, either sleeping or creeping around to no end goal. He just wastes time and space, essentially, and that is what he was doing in the human state, as well. Moving back to an existential standpoint, Kafka says that when one is just existing rather than living, it doesn't matter if Gregor is a person or a bug, it all is the same. One needs to live to achieve the standard of being a real person.

Kafka's Metamorphosis, after the arduous processing of decoding his hidden messages and warnings, can be seen as a much more simple piece: a fable. This fable's main goal is to expose the ills of modern society and it's uselessness when looked at from an existential standpoint. Kafka saw that the world was growing more gray and gloomy, with no glimmer of true gladness. He stresses the importance of the self and how it is indeed more important than the overwhelming vampire that is society. Joseph Campbell has warned of not following the 'machine,' the overwhelming force in life but to break free of it instead. Kafka urges his multitude of readers to do the same thing, and to not end up like Gregor, small and pitiful. So, what's the point? With all the working and stress of this time that has come to eclipse all other aspects of life, the joy of experiencing the world and making life fruitful gets left out. Modernists ask, 'Why is life merely a race to death?' That is the question. Everyone dies, and so it is every person's duty to throw of the duties of society and follow the self. Kafka's message: Do not spectate, participate. Do not follow, lead. Do not exist, live.

Nice to Eat (with) You: Blog Post #29

The constant interplays between characters in literature is amazing. Writers and authors use so many different tools in order to convey relationships, but the most prevalent and realistic is communion at the dinner table. Sharing food is almost sacred, and shows a bond much different and much more deeply rooted than a bond, say, of acquaintance. Foster says, "We're quite particular about those with whom we break bread ... The act of taking food into our bodies is so personal that we really only want to do it with people we're very comfortable with" (Foster 8). This relates to Kafka's Metamorphosis, as the family will not eat with Gregor, and closes Gregor's door as a more material act of separation. The family, despite supposedly loving and caring for Gregor, do not appreciate his company. Communion is a very important idea to a people, and throughout history it has accomplished amazing things in the form of nationalism. As a show of what I've learned in my history class, communion has succeeded in establishing the United States even when facing the world's most formidable military. It has won independence for India with no war fought. The sense of community achieved through communion, and chiefly eating as a group, is very powerful. Even Foster says, "... a meal scene is so difficult, and so inherently uninteresting, that there really needs to be some compelling reason to include one in the story" (Foster 8). Eating is just eating, but it also so much more and can lead to great things, as well as hide deeper meanings in a story.

As eating in communion is sharing and peaceful, vampirism is exactly the opposite. It is malicious and selfish. As one gets weaker, the other gains strength. But contrary to common belief, vampires don't have to be the scary creatures in stories. They can be anyone, any leech to society or another being. "... exploitation in its many forms. Using other people to get what we want. Denying someone else's right to live in the face of our overwhelming demands. Placing our desires, particularly our uglier ones, above the needs of another" (Foster 21). This directly relates to The Metamorphosis, as Gregor is the subject, and his family is the vampire. They use him to pay off their debt, and this work sucks the life out of him and eventually kills Gregor, leaving the family stronger and more self-sufficient than ever before. Foster also talks about the target of vampires, specifically Dracula, in this piece, and it can also pertain to The Metamorphosis. "Always, he's alluring, dangerous, mysterious, and he tends to focus on beautiful, unmarried women" (Foster 16). This correlates to Kafka's work because vampires target the young and vital, as they are probably the most viable source of life, sustenance for vampires. Gregor is the family's first victim, and he is killed. But near the end, it is impossible to miss the change in language used to talk about Grete. It is unmistakably of desire or lust, as if she is the family's next victim...

Blog Post #28: ***Excused for Absence***

Metamorphosis Reflective Paragraphs

Throughout Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Gregor seems very conflicted on the inside. He is very indecisive at the beginning and then as the story progresses he thinks either loves or complains about his family. "...he told himself again that he could not possibly remain in bed and that it might be the most reasonable thing to sacrifice everything if there was even the slightest hope of getting himself out of bed in the process. At the same moment, however, he did not forget to remind himself from time to time of the fact that calm—indeed the calmest—reflection might be much better than confused decisions" (Kafka 3). This indecisiveness shows that he makes small decisions much larger then necessary, and alludes to the fact that he is not really a go-getter. This is extended when he thinks to himself how he wants to quit and tell off his boss, but he probably won't because he will talk himself out of it. This, though, shows that Gregor is still thinking like himself, at a human level. This will change later on, as his condition progresses. Another example of his early internal conflictions is near the same time, when he is trying to rock himself off his bed. "...and very soon he would finally have to make a final decision, for in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven. Then there was a ring at the door of the apartment. 'That’s someone from the office,' he told himself..." (Kafka 3). He is constantly coming up with excuses not to make decisions, like the one to get himself off the bed. Earlier, he wasted time thinking about how two people could make the task a lot easier, when he knew his family could not help him at all. He spends much time rocking back and forth, and uses his manager from showing up as another excuse. He stops himself from progressing in life, is his own worst enemy. Near the end of the story, his internal conflictions are still present, but in a less sophisticated way. "Gregor hissed at all this, angry that no one thought about shutting the door and sparing him the sight of this commotion" (Kafka 20). "He remembered his family with deep feelings of love" (Kafka 24). Gregor 'flip-flops' multiple times in the later stages of his ailment, and is complaining about some grievance his family has caused, or contemplating his true love for them. This shows that the brain function has diminished significantly from a human's cognitive system. A coherent human could recognize that they really love their family, and get over the small afronts. But he is a bug and so lives in the moment, for his life is short. The battles Gregor has with himself is a very enlightened way to express the states of mind Gregor goes through during the story, and Kafka is an expert at using this.

A theme that is prevalent especially in Part II of The Metamorphosis is how Gregor wants to cling to his human past, but can't resist falling into bug-like habits. He even went through the arduous task of moving a chair to the window so he can look out at the world. "Then he crept up on the window sill and, braced on the chair, leaned against the window to look out, obviously with some memory or other of the liberating sense which looking out the window used to bring him in earlier times" (Kafka 13). He wants to reconnect with his human ways. Looking out the window is a very human thing to do, and Gregor wants to be human more than anything, so he makes himself feel more human by looking out the window. He also recognizes that his new habits are gross, and so wants something to prevent him from being like a bug. "And if the furniture prevented him from carrying out his senseless crawling about all over the place, then there was no harm in that, but rather a great benefit" (Kafka 15). His sister is pushing for Gregor to be more like a bug by giving him more space to creep around. But, Gregor wants to be human and, like his mother, wants the furniture there to remind him of his past and to restrict the bug from taking over completely. An important idea that could be added here is that the total bug nature of Gregor at the end is what makes the family want to "get rid of it." Grete endorsed the bug in Gregor, though, and so indirectly led herself to hate him. Probably Gregor's most radical attempt to hold onto his human life is when he covered the picture of the stranger to prevent it from being taken away by his mother and sister. "He quickly scurried up over it and pressed himself against the glass which held it in place and which made his hot abdomen feel good. At least this picture, which Gregor at the moment completely concealed, surely no one would now take away" (Kafka 16). This is radical for Gregor because he is very considerate most of the time to his family by covering himself up whenever they come in. The act of showing himself, and showing his ability to crawl on walls, is very surprising to the mother and sister, and overall terrifying. This act brings her mother to an asthma attack and starts the altercation with his father. And this was all for the picture of a stranger he cut out of a magazine. Kafka imbeds themes throughout the story and hints at them often. It is very interesting (for me) to seek these themes out and then recognize the hints as they come up, and this one, Gregor trying to hold onto humanity, is huge.