Content
The book focuses mainly on the biographical details of Kafka's life, interspersed with short illustrated vignettes from his writing. The author relates Kafka's personality and various incidents in his life to the content of his stories. For example, the fact that he saw himself as a burden on his family is compared to stories in which the protagonist is an animal - most notably The Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist Gregor Samsa awakes to find himself transformed into a giant bug, becoming a burden to his family and becoming no longer able to support them.
Whether or not these parallels can be drawn so easily is a question reagarding Psychoanalytic literary criticism and Authorial intent.
Read more about this topic: Introducing Kafka
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“You can hardly convince a man of an error in a life-time, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be. The geologists tell us that it took one hundred years to prove that fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty more to prove that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“Nothing can or shall content my soul
Till I am evened with him, wife for wife,
Or failing so, yet that I put the Moor
At least into a jealousy so strong
That judgment cannot cure.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)