Quiz on Kafka's story (for review only)
Original Theater Piece (The Trial of Gregor Samsa)

There is the large picture. What is the underlying issue behind the story of "The Metamorphosis." The alienation of man in the 20th century. This is hardly a revelation—to address the story I feel one has to pinpoint some of the elements that function as alienating properties of life. Then too, it is probably not enough to assign blame on all these external forces—the human subject chooses how to respond—this too carries some weight.

What are the conditions of modern life that imposes alienation?       
Work                                                                                          
Family (patriarchy)  
Servility, meekness

We can look at the root of Gregor's alienation. 3 questions:
What is the closest thing to God in the story?
By what is the order of life determined?
Then, family life?

Also have to think of modernism, as a literary period. Not the same as the modern, but a time frame just after WWI to the end of WWII. During this time some of the greatest writers lived—Joyce, Woolf, Elliot, Faulkner, and Kafka.

Influential thinkers from the 19th into the 20th Century. Marx. Darwin. Nietzsche, Freud.
Marx—Economic forces as shapers of history. Capitalism as the present looming evil, exploitative in ways similar to monarchy.
Darwin—the evolution theory gives a different view on the centrality of man in the Universe, on the design of “god.”
Nietzsche-- Critique of the meek following of leaders out for their own good. The weakness of the human in comparison to his potential, which N blamed in large part on some church doctrines (particularly on meekness and humility.)
Freud--. The inner life of the human is rich and complex. Gives “reasons” for some inclinations, for dreams, etc. Before were explained away through spiritual means.
All in all creates a psychic instability, compounded by the realization of what the human is capable of (in WWI). The meta-principles of life fall away in authority and there is so much less on which to depend or to stake belief.

Two things to remember about Modernism. One is that there is an implicit cultural project for the artist in modernism—to create through art a kind of sacred, a meaning that has been lost.
Second, for the modernist, the realist project of holding a mirror up to nature is insufficient. Art must take into account human consciousness, with sub and unconscious realms. It must take into account all the distortions that human subjectivity brings to perception and awareness.