THE METAMORPHOSIS MOTIF IN THE NOVEL OF FRANZ KAFKA

Abstract

The definitions of the lexeme ―metamorphosis‖ are in itself semiotically gripping. Whether in a more figurative level, as ―complete change of shape‖, as ―change in appearance, character‖ or in a deeper level, such as ―change of nature‖ which seems to throw doubt in the very identity of the entity which is subjected to the transformation, the metamorphosis is revealed as an instructive phenomenon of the way how the significance operates in its different strata. Very common to the mythical world and the realm of biology, it still receives a particular facet in the Franz Kafka‘s work The metamorphosis (1997), as a result of the significant importance given to the tempo that rules the phenomenon: not enough the tension caused by the modal concessive constitution of the transmutation of man into an insect, there is a disharmony intrinsic to the phenomenon, inasmuch as the bodily and sensory metamorphosis of Gregor was faster than the intellectual one. Furthermore, the metamorphosis motif is thus typified by a problem of phenomenological nature: what modal arrangements are in the act of Grete‘s consciousness when she makes a judgment about her brother?