Animal Imagery in Modern Literature - Coursework Example

– This is as much of the paper as I am able to finish at this point as the other book has not yet arrived even though I had it expressshipped. Student name Instructor name Course name Date Animal Imagery Throughout time, authors have used animals to help emphasize human emotions and attitudes. Depending on the type of animal used, authors have been able to use the symbol of the animal to represent fidelity, cleanliness, fastidiousness, courage, ferocity, wildness, domesticity, etc. The symbolism of the animal often depends on the particular animal in question. A cat might symbolize the ideals of domesticity, cleanliness or sneaky behavior. A dog can represent everything from loyal companionship to relentless hunter. It seems the most common animals used are either very wild animals such as tigers, wolves or bears or they are very common animals such as cats, dogs and birds. In addition, the degree to which a character is related to the animal in question may have some impact on the characteristics that are brought out in each. A nanny closely related to a busy parakeet might cause both woman and animal to take on stronger characteristics of nagging and cleanliness, for instance. A man closely related with his bulldog might also seem to be watchful, noisy and largely for show. What is interesting about this use of animal imagery in stories is the way in which this relationship develops to bring out specific characteristics in both animal and character. Two stories that provide a great deal of insight into this relationship are Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl. Although the story takes up less than 100 pages, Franz Kafka’s story Metamorphosis lends itself to a wide variety of interpretations as it uses the image of the cockroach to emphasize attributes of its main character. From its small size to a brief summary of its events, there doesn’t seem to be all that much to the story itself upon first glance. The story follows the experiences of Gregor Samsa after he wakes up one morning to find himself turned into a giant bug in his own bed. As he reveals himself to his family and his employer, it becomes obvious that this change is not meant to be a figurative change on the part of the author, but is also a physical change. Although the family continues to care for him, providing him with food and water and cleaning his room once a day, Gregor becomes more and more detached from them, eventually finding it difficult to keep track of what has been happening around him. His room becomes dirtier, his family becomes less attentive and he becomes less concerned with their welfare in connection with his own. As his sister and mother move his personal furniture out of his room, he leaves the room with a mind toward helping his sister, but is instead attacked by his father, becoming wounded in the process when an apple thrown at him becomes lodged in his back. Rather than tending to his wounds, the family locks him back in his room again where the apple is able to fester for months. The room becomes the general receptacle of household debris. Finally, one night, Gregor makes a final attempt to reconnect with his family which results in such harsh and complete rejection that he simply crawls back in his room and dies. Through this general summary of events, then, it can be seen that one of the major themes of Kafka’s Metamorphosis is that of isolation and the devastating effects it can have on the individual as represented in the animal imagery used within the text. It can be argued that Gregor’s transformation into a large bug, often interpreted to be a cockroach, is a literal indication of his feelings of separation from humanity, including the members of his own family. This can be seen from the very beginning of the story. Despite waking up to find himself in the form of a bug, Gregor’s primary concern remains to get to work in order to continue supporting the family who has been dependent upon him for the past five years. This brings out the repetitive nature of the mechanical animal as Gregor trudges along his same routine day after day. As he reflects upon his position, he reveals the level of disconnectedness that has already occurred between himself and his family, indeed the rest of humanity, since he took a job as a traveling salesman: “And apart from business itself, this plague of traveling: the anxieties of changing trains, the irregular, inferior meals, the ever changing faces, never to be seen again, people with whom one has no chance to be friendly” (13). Even in his own home, he has taken up the habit of locking his bedroom doors “as if in a hotel” (16) and he continues to follow the rules and regulations set forth by his father even though he is the sole breadwinner of the family. As the family pleads with his manager to believe Gregor is sick, the picture of his life before the transformation becomes complete. “The boy thinks of nothing but his work! It makes me upset to see how he never goes out after supper; do you know he’s just spent a whole week here and been at home every evening! He sits down with us at the table and stays there, quietly reading the paper or studying his timetables” (21). Not only does Gregor not have any friends with whom to spend his evenings, but he apparently also spends little time actually interacting with his family even when he is home, choosing instead to engage himself in solitary activities, again recalling the behavior of the cockroach in its solitary nightly hunts. In keeping with this theme of isolation, much of the story takes place within the confines of Gregor’s room, which itself symbolizes the state of his relationships with other people much like the cockroach hides away in the cracks and crevices of the home. Only Gregor’s sister is brave enough to enter the room, and then only when he is hiding beneath the couch or under a sheet. Even his one activity of escape from his room, staring out the window, becomes meaningless as the world outside fades into a featureless expanse of grey before his dimming eyesight. This illustrates the degree to which the human character’s world has been reduced to something more in keeping with the world of the bug. Despite his terror at having someone enter his room as well as his feelings of fear regarding its emptiness, “his great room, in which he was obliged to remain flat on his stomach on the floor, frightened him in a way that he could not understand” (42), the room nevertheless seems to be confining, as he finds himself constantly running about the walls and ceiling as a means of filling the void. This activity leads to the removal of his personal furniture from the room, removing yet more of his individual identity and distancing him more from his former life and the relationships he once shared while placing him more in connection with the insect as he continues to lose possessions and human emotion. As he listens to his mother explaining to his sister the need to keep the room as it was to remind Gregor of himself, he thinks, “Did he really wish to allow this warm, comfortable room with its genial furniture to be transformed into a cavern in which, in rapid and complete forgetfulness of his human past, he might exercise his right to crawl all over the walls? It seemed he was already so near to forgetting” (59). Coming to this thought, he makes a valiant attempt to preserve the portrait he had so carefully framed on his wall just before his transformation, just barely able to cover it with his body, but then ends up destroying it himself. While much of the story is told from the point of view of Gregor himself, who retains the cognitive ability of a human, Gregor the bug is unable to communicate in any meaningful way with his family. His sister brings him the food he likes to eat not because she understands what he likes, but instead because she clears away what he does not eat. When he stops eating, she does not seem to take notice of this, instead merely sweeping away the old stuff and bringing in new each day. When he tries to protect his picture as a sign that he does not want his room emptied of signs of human habitation, she instead becomes angry with him for frightening their mother. His few attempts to leave the room to become involved with the family are met with violence and physical harm. “Gregor had to find some way of pacifying his father, so he quickly crawled to the door of his room and pressed himself against it for his father to see, as he came in, how he had every intention of returning to his own room immediately and that it was not necessary to drive him back with violence; one had only to open the door and he would quickly withdraw. But his father was in no mood to notice these fine points” (64). Even at the end, when he creeps out of his room in response to his sister’s open heart as she plays her music, he is misunderstood and completely rejected. Throughout Kafka’s Metamorphosis, it can be seen through the author’s use of animal imagery how isolation permeates the book and drives the course of events that eventually lead to Gregor’s death. Before his transformation, he is isolated by the burdens placed upon him by his family and is given no room in which to discover his own wings. After the change occurs, he is kept locked up within his own room, slowly losing pieces of his identity to the whims and desires of the same family who now no longer have time or taste for him. As a result of his inability to connect with others, especially the sister he so dearly loved, Gregor is unable to resume his human state or to survive in his insect form. Works Cited Batson, Robbie. “Kafka-Samsa: Reality Through Symbolism.” The Kafka Project. Mauro Nervi (Ed.). 2004. D, Matthew. “The Metamorphosis: A Strange, Strange Book.” The Kafka Project. Mauro Nervi (Ed.). November 1999. Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. New York: Vanguard Press, 1946. Kenderdine, Janice. “Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.” Fifer’s Web Site. March 31, 2008 Luke, F.D. “Explain to Me Some Stories of Kafka.” New York: Gordian Press, 1983. Straus, Nina Pelikan. “Transforming Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.” Signs. Vol. 14, N. 3, (Spring 1989), pp. 651-667. Read More