two questions on Kafka

I'm answering questions 1 and 4 in Jago on page 977.

1) The story opens, "When Gregor Samsa awoke in his bed one morning from unquiet dreams, he found himself transformed into an enormous insect." When you first read those lines, did you find them humorous? When did you begin to understand the serious intent, or did the fantastic or surreal situation make it difficult for you to take the story seriously?

I read those lines entirely seriously. The fact that Gregor is a bug didn't startle me because, although his reaction was extremely unreasonable, I knew exactly what the novel was about before reading it. It also doesn't help that most characters in novels are more like caricatures than they are like actual people, so Gregor's lack of shock didn't surprise me. I knew that Kafka was painting a portrait of a man whose most important trait was illustrated by his under-reaction to his metamorphosis. The story was serious from the very first word.

4) Among Gregor's responses to his transformation, we see anxiety, frustration, and surprise, but not shock. Why doesn't Kafka present Gregor as being horrified by the discovery that he is an insect?

Kafka establishes Gregor's unusual bug-like personality immediately. Instead of focusing on the obvious fact that GREGOR IS A BUG, instead he focuses on things that no logical person would focus on in that situation, such as his inability to go to work that day (just the way that the reader would expect a bug to react to a grave situation, nonsensical). Gregor's mind is so preoccupied with everything but his own well-being that he can't focus for even one instant on the clear and present danger that he is in. This is why Kafka neglects Gregor's shock reaction. If Gregor reacted in the same way that a normal person would react, the reader would assume that Gregor is also a normal person and the character of Gregor is meant to illustrate more than just a story, it's meant to exaggerate certain characteristics in the hopes of making some comment on the self-destructive tendencies of over-conforming, just like in Gregor's case.

group discussion dynamic

In discussing conformity, the least interesting aspect was the discussion about conformity. In fact, the most interesting thing to observe was the dynamic between four men discussing an issue that they didn't necessarily agree on. Generally when people know they're being watched, they try to behave in the way they're asked to behave or in order to give good impressions to people. That didn't happen with this group, instead the only thing that happened was the development of a courtroom type situation of all things. Hear me out, this analogy might get weird. Brian is the witness, Jeff is the examiner, Ravi is the judge, Eddie is the jury. So as soon as Brian took the stand, he made an assertion. That assertion was immediately challenged by Jeff, who was trying to create reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury (Eddie). Ravi will come into play soon, I promise. So Jeff continued his line of questioning, while Brian defended his logic (fairly well in my opinion), and Eddie was charged with deciding whether Brian can be trusted or not. So every once in a while Jeff will ask a question that itself was questionable, meaning that Jeff said something that was a little illogical, and Ravi steps in to clarify that Brian has grounds to disregard the question. Isn't that way more interesting than conformity! By choosing to start the discussion, Brian pitted himself in a battle to save the reliability of his point of view. Eddie is still in deliberation, but I expect the verdict to read thusly, "I the man of the jury find the defendant Brian Daneshgar... still reliable."