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Does Gregor Samsa Crawl over the Ceiling and Walls?: Intra-narrative Fiction in Kafka's Die Verwandlung

Does Gregor Samsa Crawl over the Ceiling and Walls?: Intra-narrative Fiction in Kafka's Die... Abstract: The overwhelming majority of scholars assume that in Die Verwandlung Gregor crawls over the walls and the ceiling. The intra-narrative reality of the sticky substance ("Klebstoff") which, according to the narrator, Gregor has in his extremities, is also taken for granted. A close reading of the text allows us to infer, however, that the purported crawling and the sticky substance are a mere product of the imagination of Gregor's deeply perturbed mind, and that Kafka himself never took the references to the "Klebstoff" and the "Herumkriechen" seriously: they are nothing but intra-narrative fiction. This conclusion provides another cogent argument a contrario that Gregor Samsa is always—for the author and for the other characters in the novella—purely and simply a human being. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Monatshefte University of Wisconsin Press

Does Gregor Samsa Crawl over the Ceiling and Walls?: Intra-narrative Fiction in Kafka's Die Verwandlung

Bermejo-Rubio, Fernando.
Monatshefte , Volume 105 (2) – Jun 9, 2013
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Publisher
University of Wisconsin Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 The Board of Regents of The University of Wisconsin System.
ISSN
1934-2810
Publisher site
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Abstract

Abstract: The overwhelming majority of scholars assume that in Die Verwandlung Gregor crawls over the walls and the ceiling. The intra-narrative reality of the sticky substance ("Klebstoff") which, according to the narrator, Gregor has in his extremities, is also taken for granted. A close reading of the text allows us to infer, however, that the purported crawling and the sticky substance are a mere product of the imagination of Gregor's deeply perturbed mind, and that Kafka himself never took the references to the "Klebstoff" and the "Herumkriechen" seriously: they are nothing but intra-narrative fiction. This conclusion provides another cogent argument a contrario that Gregor Samsa is always—for the author and for the other characters in the novella—purely and simply a human being.

Journal

Monatshefte – University of Wisconsin Press

Published: Jun 9, 2013

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