Kafka's Text

How is Kafka's text "surreal"?

Surrealism is a heavy movement seen throughout Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis". Kafka incorporates surrealist literature into his novella through what the main character, Gregor Samsa, is experiencing. Gregor wakes up one day as a cockroach, which in itself is absolutely absurd. This is definitely surrealism in it's purest form, absurdity used to make nonsense make sense (if that makes sense, haha). Surrealism goes against "realism" or any traditional forms of literature. It is commonly referred to as the "dream state" of literature, and does not utilize logic to base the story or plot line. Typically, surrealism does not follow a structured plot of events, rather, random experiences strung together to form the story. This is seen in Kafka's work right at the beginning of the novella where Gregor wakes up in his bed to see himself as a bug. The audience is not introduced to the main character, nor are they given context about his life -- the audience is living through the character at the moment they are experiencing it. The audience does not know what happened before or after Gregor's metamorphosis, the novel is purely about his transformation. Surrealism blurs the demarkation of dream and reality, in order to see a new kind of reality; this is exactly Kafka's intention. Kafka pushed to view society in a different light through the life of the Samsa's -- financial struggles, family issues and all. He drew attention to the grueling reality of living in a capitalist society and the social issues at the time. Gregor's metamorphosis into a bug is a metaphor for the mental and physical stress he has been weighted with. Although his transformation is absurd and shocking to the public, it tells the story of a man, slaved to the society he lives in, and Kafka captures the reality perfectly through surrealism.