The Samsas

Gregor’s family are assholes! I really can’t get over how terrible they are. Gregor just sits around in his room for months, and they just leave him there. It’s disgusting. At the beginning of the section, I thought his sister might gradually warm up to him, as she seems to be trying to be nice. She gets him milk, his favorite beverage, but as time passes, it appears that she just gives him food out of necessity. She is incredibly disgusted whenever she sees him. She literally can’t stand the sight of him, and he is so damned nice as an insect. He realizes he disgusts her, so he spends four hours positioning a blanket over himself. Four hours! When his mom decides to go see him, she collapses upon seeing him, and he feels guilty. Ridiculous! Then his dad comes home and gets mad at Gregor.

This section leads me to believe that Kafka had one terrible family life. There is nothing ok with how Gregor’s family behaves. I am also incredibly confused as to why Gregor wants to help them. Why does he care about them? They suck. They aren’t supportive or understanding. There is no sympathy at all. They seem upset that he somehow became a bug. His father is mad that they no longer have a source of income. His mother is just upset by the whole ordeal.

Most importantly, his family refuses to treat him like a person. They never address him. They don’t try to find out how much of him remains in the bug. They just like him in his room. They have no clue his mind is still as it was because they don’t bother to explore this and find it out. They also don’t try to remedy Gregor’s problem. The mother and father don’t try to find a cure. In any other book, if this happened, I would expect the parents to try everything they could, like reading up on the subject or approaching “mystics.” Not here though. They just lock him up. Assholes.

First Impressions on Kafka

When I first started The Metamorphosis, I honestly enjoyed the absurdist tone. It is an interesting change of pace compared to many of the things I have read. It is so delightfully bizarre. There is no way anyone would wake up as a huge, nasty bug and just write it off as a casual disturbance. Gregor is such a darkly funny character. However, it has started to wear thin on me. I can’t really get much out of the book because it is so ridiculous. None of it sort of connects to how people really act. It is indeed funny and creepy, but it is just so unreal. I really think in books as bizarre as this one, the way one makes it believable is to have very real human interactions take place in bizarre situations. This is obviously not the case in this book. Gregor and his family have seemingly loveless, dry interactions, and the mean actions of Gregor’s boss are totally unbelievable. I feel like I might be being a little harsh on this book, but as of right no, I can’t really enjoy it. I can’t gain anything from reading it. It’s an interesting little story, but I cannot treat it as anything more in my mind. I really hope the remaining part of this story changes my mind.

The Split

In preparation for my panel presentation, I read a lot about Romero and Brett’s split. As was stated during our presentation, Donald Daiker believes that, contrary to what Brett says, Romero leaves Brett. In a way, it makes sense. Brett seems like she was dumped when she is talking to Jake. She is truly devastated by the end of the relationship, which seems to run contrary to her other flings. Her self esteem is at an all time low, and she even wants to get back together with Mike, who made a spectacular ass of himself in Pamplona. I find this interpretation of the scene really interesting, but I don’t really agree with it. I understand where Daiker is coming from, but there is no solid textual evidence. Also, Brett is usually open with Jake; when they are alone, she tells him the truth. I believe that she really needed to let off steam about her situation to someone, in this case Jake, so she vented about what actually happened to get it off her chest.

Instead of Daiker’s interpretation of this scene, I firmly believe that Romero left Brett, although he did this because he had no other choice. He saw that she would always be a free spirit, which is not what he wanted. He wanted a lot of her, he wanted her to grow out her hair and to settle down, which she did not want to do. She has no intention of settling down, enjoying the life of bumping around Europe that her clique engages in. She is not going to compromise who she is for this kid, even if she does love him. She is who she wants to be, at least for the moment. Her edgy style and raucous lifestyle keeps her going. She isn’t necessarily happy, but she still wants to live the way she has been.

I do believe she is not entirely truthful in the end with Jake, trying to paint herself in a better light in regards to her split with Romero. Instead of admitting that she doesn’t want to settled down into a conventional lifestyle, she says she doesn’t want to ruin Romero. This still shows why they didn’t work out. In this statement, she admits that she would not change for Romero. However, she somewhat distorts this, but it is still quite obvious what the situation was to Jake.

Traditional Values

In the post-war world of The Sun Also Rises, there seems to be a breakdown of traditional values. In the Left Bank, it is a new world, vastly different from what it was only a couple of decades ago. In this new place, the characters we follow are living life without a clear set of values or morals; they all have their own sorts of honor codes, but they don’t adhere to a greater cultural norm in regards to conducting themselves. Interestingly, the only characters who seem taken by traditional values are Cohn and Romero, who are the only characters who weren’t in the war. These men are also the two who most spectacularly did not work out with Brett. Both of them were uncomfortable with her lack of traditional values. Cohn, a man who tries to hold himself to these old standards of decency, can’t accept Brett’s sexual/romantic values. This is a man who seems to be filled with frustration, most likely from being the token Jew at Princeton, and he deals with it honorably, taking up boxing, only letting his aggression out in the ring. He can’t understand why Brett doesn’t buy into the antiquated value set that he does. She does not seem to have any interest in settling down and getting married, being with only one man, which is presumably what Cohn wants for her. He can’t understand her behaviors in the least, possibly explain his creepy behavior towards her after she spurns him. He courted her, she seemed to return his feelings, so why the hell was she running around with other guys? Romero is an honorable man who definitely has traditional values, which are shown in his traditional style in bullfighting. He is a kind young, arguably naïve, man who adheres to a righteous moral code. Thus, when he and Brett become a pair, he is worried by her bizarre behaviors. He gets uncomfortable, wishing to mold her into what he thinks she should be. He wants to marry her, as he thinks that is what one should do and hopefully it might chill her out. These men cannot cope with Brett’s lack of a traditional set of values.

Behind the Mask

Alright, so I know I already wrote a post about how great Bill is, but I came up with another key reason for his awesomeness: he can communicate. You are never left guessing about the tone or meaning of his words or about what he might not be saying. In this novel, there seems to be a premium placed upon people not being able to truthfully communicate with one another. There is very little in the way of honesty or directness in the conversations between the “friends” in this novel. Try to think of the number of honest conversations in this book. Now try to think of the positive, friendly honest conversations. Guess who’s involved? Bill. Just saying.

I can really only think of a few times when people are honest besides Bill. Jake and Brett are honest to one another at times, but it is always just talk of how miserable they are. Mike is honest to Cohn, telling him that he is a disgusting Jew. Besides these moments, everyone is either putting on a fake happy face, blatantly lying, or hiding real meaning behind jokes and sarcastic wit. Now I’m not gonna lie, I love a lot of the quick-fire dialogue in this book, but almost none of it is honest. I believe this ties back to how screwed up everyone is from the war. They feel ruined and cope with it by putting on these public masks and disguising everything behind humor. It is almost painful to read how shaken these people are.

Bill Gorton

Alright, so Bill is great. He is a completely likable character, which is quite refreshing in this book. Don’t get me wrong, I like the characters, but most of them have flaws that can get quite annoying. Bill just loves to joke around. On the surface, he’s just a happy guy who loves laughing and practical jokes. It is nice to see someone who hasn’t been totally messed up. Well, for the most part. I believe that Bill’s joking is a form of coping. He is another veteran, and he has had to deal with the same problems as the others. Instead of giving into the depression and self doubt that seems to come with being a veteran in this book, he tries to “never be daunted.” He stays positive, which is damn admirable. He also uses alcohol to cope like every other character in the book. He drinks non-stop for like four days, living in a haze during this time. This is the one sad part about Bill. This is the only proof that he is not completely on top of everything. He believes alcohol is one of the only important things in the world. Despite this, I still love him as a character. His ability to still enjoy the world is nice to see. Especially compared to Brett, Cohn, and Jake being sullen half of the time. Also, he is a great friend to Jake. Cohn, who is supposedly great friends with Jake, doesn’t actually seem to get along with him all that much. Bill, on the other hand, spends a rather lovely week with him fishing in which they are completely comfortable.

In The Club

First of all, I would like to say that the conclusions drawn in this post are based on Jake’s (and seemingly Hemingway’s) views. One scene of particular interest to me in the book is the scene in the bar with Jake and the gay men. While it only lasts for about a page, it very deeply delves into Jake’s character. As with the “iceberg effect,” one can tease so much out of this little scene. Jake is utterly disgusted with these homosexual men because they have shunned an opportunity. They actually could be manly men, but have chosen not to be. Jake has been denied this choice, having (in his eyes) his very manhood destroyed. While Jake does not openly express why he is so annoyed with the men, it is very obvious. They have chosen to live a supposedly unmanly life, like Jake. Jake has to suffer all the time because of his unmanliness (once again, this is entirely from his own perspective), and he has no choice. Meanwhile, these men have chosen this “cursed” life. In a way, it seems that they are mocking everything Jake is. They mimic his situation jokingly, bouncing around clubs, laughing and drinking and hanging out with women, enjoying themselves. They parade themselves around in front of Jake, enjoying a situation that has pretty much destroyed his life; he cannot be with the woman he loves. Also, it is interesting to note Brett’s comfort with the group of gay men. She talks about how she can drink without regard around them and she can be comfortable. This mirrors her situation with Jake. We only really see Brett’s true emotions when she is with Jake. She is incredibly comfortable around him, not feeling the need to put up a façade of happiness or confidence. This further hurts Jake as he has to sit there and be reminded of the fact that he is a totally non-sexual object in Brett’s eyes. Due to this, he can never truly be with her, as she seems to feel that sex is a necessity in a loving relationship.