Analytic exercise - Essay Example

Analysis of Metamorphosis by Frantz Kafka Analysis of Metamorphosis by Frantz Kafka Metamorphosis by Frantz Kafka is a text, which describes about Gregor Samsa in connection with his family when he is transformed into ‘horrible vermin’. It can be called a text because the readers can find the qualities of a unified whole in the work (Hoey 2000). Every incident and happening in the story is connected to the main theme of isolation and physical transformation of the protagonist, Samsa. The protagonist narrates the past incidents and also considers his present situation.

The switching between past and present is also linked as after getting up, he finds himself as a vermin, but he continuously ponders over his routine life and concludes that he may be considering him transformed because of lack of proper rest and intensely busy routine. In the first passage, Samsa awakens from troubled dreams and them we can find the mentioning of dream, uneasy sleep, waking up early, lack of rest and other hints pointing towards busy life and comfortless sleeping of the protagonist that connects the whole text and makes it unified.

A text has connections (Hoey 2000). The text has long and short, both kinds of sentences for creating an informal tone. The written content appears as a personal narration of Samsa in place of written by some other author. For example, first he tells about his transformation, then his busy routine and restlessness and then, connects his present situation to the reasons of his restless life.Metaphors are part of our daily life (Lakoff & Johnson 1981). The writer of the text makes use of metaphorical language to put forward his perspective about modern life and busy routines of people.

The theme of seclusion is represented by the physical transformation of the protagonist. The writer uses the metaphor of metamorphosis of the protagonist indicating towards an insect like development of his character. His transformation points towards his loneliness and seclusion that is further strengthened by his physical changing. The writer also uses the metaphor of troubled dreams to indicate towards restless sleep of the protagonist. The discourse of the text is divided into chunks of past and present narration by the protagonist, but all the chunks are interconnected to form a unified text (Fairclough 2003).

The phrases like ‘strenuous career’, ‘getting up early all the time’, ‘horrible vermin….with many legs’ and ‘travelling day in and day out’, all point towards tormented life and separated being of the protagonist. The text has passive as well as active voice usage indicating towards informal speech of the text (UnderHill 2013). The usage of passive voice in depicting the situation of the protagonist when he ‘is transformed’ indicates that he is not responsible for his situation; it is his profession and comfortless life, which are responsible for his vermin like condition.

The text is a unified whole with connections linking it to the main theme of seclusion and transformation. The writer uses metaphorical language to depict the situation of Gregor Samsa.BibliographyHoey, M., 2000. Textual Interaction: An Introduction to Written Discourse Analysis.London: Routledge.Fairclough, N., 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.Underhill, J.W., 2013. Creating Worldviews. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M., 1981. Metaphors we live by.

Chicago: Univ. Press.