people love to talk about franz kafka’s surrealism, but as soon as you tell them his writing was specifically influenced by him being a multiply disabled jewish man who was bisexual, they become disinterested real fast
#seriously though no one believes me when I say that the metamorphosis is about disability
absolutely nobody can convince me that “the metamorphosis” is about anything BUT disability, ableism, and anti-semitism
like, you can literally look at kafka’s thoughts in his diaries and letters during the time he was writing it, and see him struggling with feeling physically and emotionally repulsive to people as his health was beginning to really decline, and the way his personality is shaped by paranoia, anxiety, and depression, as well as the obvious correlation between annihilation and anti-semitism
then you read the book, and it’s so fucking clear
“Kafkaesque” is reality for a lot of people.
….do. People not. KNOW this? Literaly the core of body horror is- and the thing with his family considering him a burden and-
*quiet silent screaming*
This stuff isn’t even subtext it’s just regular ass text, right there on the page, plain as day.
I’m curious how often people don’t unpack anti-Semitism in literature if it’s not a thing they can see through the bag without unpacking it. I can’t speak to the disability thing, but I also thought EVERYONE KNEW THESE THINGS ALREADY. It’s surprising what people do and don’t bring to the table and what people assume they do and so on.
Surprising, and, as I get older, exhausting.
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Mooncustafer 