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Metaphors
Definition of Mood
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect of a piece of writing... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes... read full definition
Mood
Explanation and Analysis:
The Metamorphosis has a dark, tragic, and lonely mood. The very first sentence of the story describes Gregor waking up as an insect: the rest of the story, in which Gregor is progressively treated more and more subhuman (and in which Gregor becomes more and more insect-like) is lonely first and foremost. In fact, Gregor’s adaptation to his non-human existence is almost as horrifying as the transformation itself. Eventually Gregor moves and thinks like an insect, not a person.
Gregor's reliance on a family who can not understand him is a terrifying yet fundamentally human experience. The communicative disconnect between Gregor and his family is never bridged, despite brief moments of seeming respite (mostly due to Grete intuiting Gregor's wants and needs). Gregor's solitary existence contributes to the lonely, and horrifying, mood. Moreover, Gregor's eventual death, which alleviates a great burden from his family, is a tragic conclusion to the dark story.
The mood is also absurd in both the conventional and the philosophical sense of the word. Waking up with the mind of a person but the body of a large insect is conventionally absurd. Living the rest of one's life as an insect, with no understanding or meaning ever provided for why that happened (and no ability to discuss one's life with anyone else), is philosophically absurd, as philosophical absurdism explores the inherent tension between the search for meaning and understanding and the fact that life is largely meaningless—a tension that brings itself to bear on Gregor's situation, since the exact cause of his transformation remains unclear.
Related Themes:
