Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883 in Prague and lived until June 3, 1924 when he passed away at the age of 40 near Vienna, Austria. He was the oldest of six children, two of whom died while he was still a child. His sisters were sent to a ghetto during the Holocaust, and one was later killed in a concentration camp. Kafka had a rocky and abusive relationship with his father. Kafka was fluent in both German and Czech, and did study French as well. He studied classics throughout high school and then attended Charles-FerdinandUniversity, where he studied law.
Much of Kafka's work was published after his death by his friends and family. In addition to The Metamorphosis, published in 1915, he wrote several other works concerning people living their lives while having to deal with hardships, such as The Trial and The Castle. The majority of his writings were unfinished or could not be translated accurately, since he used many words whose meanings were meant to be unclear. Kafka's works were influenced by his heritage, such as his Jewish background and the German writing style (The Metamorphosis contains paragraphs with extremely long sentences, which were common in German literature). Some critics believe that Kafka's works contain traces of Marxism.
The Metamorphosis is an example of existentialist literature, a literary movement inspired by existentialist philosophy. Existentialists generally believe that the world is meaningless and that although man is a part of the world, he is also distanced from it (an idea that is present in the novel in protagonist Gregor’s transformation and his exile from the rest of his family). Literary works that follow the existentialist ideas are also generally pessimistic and build on the ideas of fear, angst, and dread. The term“existentialism” comes from the exploration of human existence and its purpose.
Existentialism was based on the ideas of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Soren Kierkegaard, and Martin Heidegger. Nietzsche believed that there was no purpose to life, while Kierkegaard studied subjectivity among other things and Heidegger explored the issues of being and anxiety (both prominent existentialist ideas today). Kafka and other existentialist writers expanded upon these ideas and came up with their own in order to develop existentialist works of literature.