Benedict 1
Lindsay Benedict
Beth Herman-Davis
CI 519
1 December 2010
Multi-Genre Text Set
Essential Question
 How does a sense of responsibility toward family, culture, or society affect the way
people lead their lives?
Main Text
1. Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Trans. and ed. Stanley Corngold. New York: Norton, 1996.
1-42. Print.
Text Set
Graphic Novel
2. Kafka, Franz and Peter Kuper. The Metamorphosis. New York: Crown Publishing, 2003.
Print.
Letters and Diaries
3. Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Trans. and ed. Stanley Corngold. New York: Norton, 1996.
61-75. Print.
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Film
4. “The Metamorphosis (Part I).” Dir. Charlie Ramos. Perf. Karl-Heinz Teuber, Deidre Green,
Deidre Scully, and Brian Vouglas. Animated short. 1999. YouTube. 28 November 2010.
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DfrBcjisVo>
5. “Nabokov on Kafka.” Dir. Peter Medak. Perf. Christopher Plummer. Television. 1989.
YouTube. 28 November 2010. < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boSFjzWJXcU>
6. The Squid and the Whale. Dir. Noah Baumbach. Perf. Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, Jeff
Daniels, and Laura Linney. Sony Pictures, 2005. DVD.
Music
7. Butch Coolidge and the 5th Round Dive. “The Gregor Samsa.” 11 November 2007. YouTube.
28 November 2010. < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsv5UxBNAts>
Article
8. Santner, Eric. "Kafka and the Writing of Abjection." The Metamorphosis. Trans. and ed.
Stanley Corngold. New York: Norton, 1996. 195-210. Print.
Short Story
9. Tan, Amy. “Fish Cheeks.” The Bedford Reader. 9th ed. Eds. Jane Aaron, Dorothy Kennedy,
and Jane Aaron. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 94-95. Print.
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Poem/Picture Book
10. Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Illus. Susan Jeffers. Boston:
Dutton Juvenile, 2001. Print.
Rationales
Main Text
1. The Metamorphosis and Text Set Rationale
Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is a classic novella, originally published in 1915, in
which Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, awakes to find that he has been transformed into a
giant insect. As the sole provider for his family, a family that will eventually neglect, abuse, and
kill him, Gregor’s first concern is that he will be late for work. Although there are many ways to
interpret the causes for and meaning of Gregor’s transformation, one interpretation is that
Gregor’s obligation to his family that seems to need him causes him to abandon hope of love and
to work tirelessly only to support his family and pay his father’s debts. Based on that
interpretation, this text set will focus on finding answers to the following essential question: How
does a sense of responsibility toward family, culture, or society affect the way people lead their
lives?
High school seniors are on the cusp of their own metamorphoses, although hopefully
none quite as drastic as Gregor’s. Students of this age are beginning to face their own future
responsibilities, those obligations they will need to learn to balance in order to achieve their
goals. As this text set intends to show, finding this balance is a constant struggle for everyone.
Sometimes a person’s sense of responsibility to fulfill all of these obligations can derail his or
her own life plans and lead to feelings of solitude and isolation. Luckily, selections such as those
found in this text set are available to help students understand that everyone has obligations,
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either to family, friends, culture, or society, and many people feel the constant pull from all
sides, but a heightened sense of this kind of responsibility toward others can make one turn into a
humongous vermin…figuratively, of course.
Graphic Novel
2. The Metamorphosis graphic novel
This book is adapted from Kafka’s novella using similar text, but with black-and-white
comic-style drawings to illustrate the actions of the original. Graphic novels like this one are an
excellent way for struggling readers to comprehend more challenging texts, as it makes it easier
for students to relate to and remember what was read while conveying nearly the same
information as the other texts.
Letters and Diaries
3. Franz Kafka’s letters and diaries
These diary entries and letters to colleagues, friends, and family help students understand
Kafka’s reasons for writing The Metamorphosis; Kafka found himself in a situation similar to
Gregor’s wherein his family asked him to be a factory boss while his brother-in-law was out of
town, which led to strained familial relationships. According to a letter Kafka wrote to Elli
Hermann, his oldest sister, in the autumn of 1921, “The family, then, is an organism, but an
extremely complicated and unstable one; like every organism it too continually strives for
equilibrium. . . . The reason for the absolute impossibility of immediately achieving a just
equilibrium (and only a just equilibrium is a true equilibrium, only it can endure) within this
family animal is the unequal rank of its parts, that is the monstrous dominance of the parent pair
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over the children for many years. As a result, while their children are growing up, the parents
arrogate to themselves the sole prerogative of representing the family not only to the outside
world but also within the inner spiritual organization; thus they deprive their children, step by
step, of the right to their own personality and from then on can make them incapable of ever
asserting this right in a healthy way, a misfortune which can later befall the parents not much less
gravely than the children” (72). Letters like this one increase students’ comprehension of the
meanings of the novella while beginning to tackle the essential question at hand.
Film
4. “The Metamorphosis (Part I)”
This eight minute animated short film only shows the beginning portion of The
Metamorphosis, but this is substantial to get an interesting visual and aural perspective on the
events in the story while also introducing Gregor’s obligations to his job and family. This video
could be used as a hook to gain students’ attention and interest – it might look like A Bug’s Life,
but the two animated pieces of work could not be more different.
5. “Nabokov on Kafka”
This thirty minute “lecture” from Vladimir Nabokov (played by Christopher Plummer)
on the subject of The Metamorphosis to a classroom full of students at Cornell University is a
little bit complex at times, but “Nabokov’s” style is highly engaging. Visual aids showing the
Russian author’s perception of Gregor’s form as an insect as well as a floor plan of the Samsas’
apartment help clarify parts of the novella that may have been confusing to students encountering
The Metamorphosis for the first time.
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6. The Squid and the Whale
This narrative film tells the director’s semi-autobiographical story of the divorce of the
parents of two adolescent boys in New York City during the 1980s. Many of each boy’s actions
in the film are a direct result of their allegiance or sense of obligation to one of their parents. In
fact, the first line in the film, spoken by the younger son as they prepare to play a family doubles
tennis match are, “Mom and me versus you and Dad.” The patriarch of the family, to whom the
older son attempts to remain loyal, is a pretentious college English professor; this pretention is
exhibited by the older son, who makes his girlfriend read The Metamorphosis. Their
conversation about the novella is nothing short of hilarious:
Sophie: Yeah. I mean, it's gross when he turns into the bug, but I love how matter of fact
everything is.
Walt: Yeah, it's very Kafkaesque.
Sophie: [She gives him a strange look and laughs.] ‘cause it's written by Franz Kafka…
Walt: Right. I mean, clearly.
The family undergoes a metamorphosis throughout the film not unlike that of the Samsa family
as they struggle to find the balance that works for them. Only selected clips from this film would
be shown to the class.
Music
7. “The Gregor Samsa”
This catchy tune by a band called Butch Coolidge and the 5th Round Dive may have
never made its way into the annals of popular music, but its lyrics do directly address the
essential question for this text set:
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7:00, Gotta make the train/It's almost 6 and I am counting down the seconds/(chorus)Cuz
I'm a salesman, gotta get my pay, collect my information, for the existential life of me I'm
still adjusting to this transformation, cuz I'm a man or I'm an insect who is crawling over
furniture, can't find my way around when nobody else lets me get my way, gotta love my
dad, my mom, my little sister, gotta do as the boss says, put the band-aids on the bleeding
blisters...
Although the YouTube video for this song does include some animation, it is not necessary to
see these visuals to understand the meaning of the song.
Article
8. "Kafka and the Writing of Abjection."
It is important for seniors in high school to be exposed to the level of literary criticism
they will encounter at the college level. Although this article will require some scaffolding, the
deep insights its author provides into the meanings of Gregor’s metamorphosis as relates to his
familial situation will be invaluable in helping students gain insight into this aspect of the
novella.
Short Story
9. “Fish Cheeks”
This very short story by Amy Tan connects the sense of responsibility that one feels
toward family to the obligation one feels toward culture. In the story, the protagonist, an
adolescent Chinese-American girl, feels torn between her family’s culture and that of her
American friends in the society in which she lives. As she attempts to reconcile the two halves
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of her inner self, the protagonist and the reader both get a sense of how difficult yet rewarding it
can be to achieve this kind of balance.
Poem/Picture Book
10. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Robert Frost’s poem is a perfect representation of a person trying to satisfy their own
individual desires in spite of the sense of obligation to family and society that is constantly in the
back of that person’s mind. Even while immersed in nature, the speaker can’t help but be aware
that there is another world to which he is responsible. This awareness is especially evident in the
last stanza of the poem: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. /But I have promises to keep,
/And miles to go before I sleep, /And miles to go before I sleep.” The picture book format is
great for struggling readers as it presents the original text of the poem against a backdrop of
beautiful illustrations, thus making the poem more visually appealing and manageable.
Conclusion
Although it is possible to interpret Kafka’s writing in a number of different ways, this
text set provides a jumping-off point for high school seniors to begin thinking about their
responsibilities to family, culture, and society, as well as how these myriad obligations will
affect their future life choices. By exploring this essential question through a variety of lenses,
more students are likely to be able to understand how to think critically about this issue, which is
surely the best form of insurance against suddenly waking up as a humongous beetle.