In this essay, I want to compare and contrast two prominent figures of the literature as well as philosophy : Franz Kafka and Albert Camus based on The Metamorphosis and The Guest respectively. The structure of the paper will be as follows: My analysis will be include both the short summaries in the political and social framework in which the stories were written and the person alities of the authers were formed and this paper will also include the philosphical presuppositions intrinsic to the stories.Kafka on whom a voluminous literature has been written is identified with melancholy, loneliness, anxiety, alienation, sense of guilt in the popular memory.In "Kafka For Beginners"(p. 3-28), Kafka's style and mood is related to his ethnic identity that is Jewish in Catholic Czechoslovakia. He was the son of a German speaking shopkeeper when German was the language of the Austro_Hungarian government of the period. (Northon Antology p.1687)On other determinant of Kafka's personality is said to be his father who was a domineering self made men. Kafka spent almost all of his life with his parents. Even after he earned his own living he did not leave them. For his father, a huge man, Franz was a futile and naughty "Schleimel" and his father without hesitation told these to his son's face.In "Metomorphosis", Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning from unsettling dreams and he finds himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. Being a tavelling sales men, he was looking after his family. In the day of transformation his boss as well as his family withnessed his new body. He was mostly worried about his family and he spent the whole day listening to the tense conversations between family members. In the novella, there is also transformation in Gregor's family. Their support and love turns into a shame and hate and thus in the end his death is celebrated with a trip out of town where they make plans for the future.I think transformation into a vermin is a methaphor- like concept representing the increasing alienation from the responsibilities and determinations of the twentieth century society and the feeling of hopelesness and nothingless which can be resembled to Camus's existentialism.There is a famous saying of Camus that " if you are not able to overcome the wall just leave under it like a dog". Continuing and inescapable suffering of the dog and the vermin can be seen a similar responses of the two writers. Kafka's heros' self-conscious quest to fit into some meaningful structure, their ceaseless attempt to do the right thing when there is no rational way of knowing what that is the very picture of absurdity and alienation that existentialist philosopheras and writers examined during and after World War 2. (Norton Antology page:1688)Camus, as an existentialist philospher and writer, wrote Exile and Kingdom( The Guest included in this book) in 1954, after World War 2 and during the Algerian Anti-Colonical War against France. Camus was born in 1913...
