For me, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis is an analogy for the current state of our lives. As new college students now in the eighth week of college, what started out as exploring or figuring things out is developing into a routine. A routine of sleep, school, work and sleep. The pictures I have chosen sequence a typical day. The sequence of this day is repeated for many of us, day after day after day. We wake up, we commute to school, we come back home. The first image is the all to familiar clock telling us to wake up; the second is the step we take outside in the early hours of the day; the third and fourth are the daily commute; the fifth represents the end of the day; and the six is the commute back home.
This routine was Gregor’s life. He would wake up, go to work, come back home- day after day. There was no substance to his life, his routine became his life. Reading Metamorphosis and experiencing it through the dance, through our mood diaries, and through our images forced me to question the substance of my life beyond routine.
Khrystyna Melnyk
Joeleen Moy
Hanna Utkin
Kevin Parakkattu
Nicolette Belitsis
Your mini exhibition really tells a story, and I felt myself as the main character because, like you said, this is OUR daily sequence. Being that is it the 8th week of school (which is crazy, I might add), we are definitely developing a routine, like Gregor’s pre-transformation. Although I hate to say it, the routine is very monotonous and can be quite dull. While we’re fortunate to have friends or have good classes to pass the time and add some enjoyment to our routine, it seemed Gregor’s only friend was his sister – and he lost that after his transformation. Like the way they depicted Gregor’s routine in the ballet, you also conveyed it better than I think the novella did. Great job!
I feel that the pictures you chose do an excellent job at conveying routine. The clock is a natural choice, given that it’s the clock we have to obey in a daily routine. I thought your choices of traffic lights and a city skyline at sunset were interesting, since those wouldn’t usually occur to me, but I suppose a traffic light is similar to a clock in that it dictates part of our daily routine, and the city skyline could be a familiar, everyday sight.
The gallery really conveys the sense of monotony that Gregor experienced before his transformation, too. Before his transformation, he was just a salesman who probably would have seen the same things, and done the same things, day in and day out. His transformation causes an incredible upset in the routine.