Introduction

“The Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka is a short story which presents a young man who is trapped into an obscure situation and has to accept the situation as reality. On the hand “The Cask of Amontillado” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and was published in the year 1847. The books main characters are Fortunato and Montresor. It revolves around a revenge story between the two where Montresor vows to get his payback from Fortunato who insulted him and left him in a lot of furies (Poe, 2008). In “The Metamorphosis,” the main actor Gregor seemingly turned into a giant insect overnight. He realizes this fact at night but decides to go back to sleep. He is later awoken by voices from his family members and the office manager who were concerned about why he has not woken up and gone to work (Kafka, 2013).  He opens the doors and looks from behind it, and he sees his family and office manager terrified. In his new state, they rejected him as a family member but his sister offers him food, but gradually she began to view him as a nuisance. He felt like he was burdening his family, locked up himself in his bedroom and dies.

Compare or contrast how two stories discuss a similar theme.

The two stories have different themes which appear in their narration although they are portrayed to appear differently. One of the themes that in the two stories but discussed in another way is that of the theme of mortality. This is the theme that discusses the matters between life and death. In the short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” the whole narration seems to be an example of a horror story or a horror movie to the person who reads it. This is because the writer fills his narration with fixations on death, corpses, and bones. As the two characters were heading down the catacomb, there were skulls and bones of dead people all over the path that they used. This showed that death was a central theme in the story and it was the main reason as to why the author used a graveyard as the final meeting place between Montresor and Fortunato (Poe, 2008). However, to encourage the reader to continue reading the story, the author uses a lot of humor to remove the fear and make the book enjoyable.

On the other hand, the short story “The Metamorphosis,” the main actor Gregor seemingly turned into a giant insect overnight. Gregor according to the story is a kind-hearted person who ends up in an unfair nature of being in the form of an insect. This demonstrates the absurd nature of the life of not giving well to the good. There are a series of events that happened in Meursault life like the death of his mother. In a quote, he says “I said that people never change lives, that in any case, one life was as good as another and that I was not dissatisfied with mine here at all.” (Kafka, 2013). He views life so simply despite its absurd nature.

How do two stories discuss an idea similarly or differently?

The two stories manage to discuss the idea of freedom similarly where for the two main characters who are Gregor and Montresor get the feeling of being free through death. To begin with “The Cask of Amontillado,” as Montresor plans to kill and have his revenge on Fortunato, the primary mission for him was to have freedom from the pains that have been caused to him all along. After he killed and completed the mission, he felt he was free and took a breath of relief from the pain he was caused for a while. This he does so creatively luring Fortunato into an underground grave where he was to kill him and set his soul free from the bondage of the insults that he had received (Poe, 2008). He also gets satisfaction when he built a brick wall after locking him in a casket where he left him to die never to inflict insults on him.

On the other short story “The Metamorphosis,” Gregor the main actor turns from the state of being a normal human being and becomes a giant insect overnight. After his family realizes that he had turned into a bug, they decide to forsake him which does not give him a peace of mind. However, his sister does not forsake him at first where she shows a little bit of concern and even offers him some food. This continues, and her perception changes and starts viewing him as a nuisance which denies him the freedom to do anything (Kafka, 2013). He decides to find his freedom by locking himself in a room where he dies. In both stories, the ides of freedom is brought about by the death of some main characters.

Conclusions

For a book to be entertaining and to be able to educate the reader it must have a flow, clearly state it themes and also use a language that is understandable in terms of sentence structure and formulation. The two short stories “The Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe tries to demonstrate various themes to give a flow of the ideas that the authors wanted to portray. Many of the themes and ideas are different in the two stories, but there are also those that were similar also.

References

Kafka, F. (2013). The Metamorphosis. Modern Library Classics.

Poe, E. A. (2008). The cask of Amontillado. The Creative Company.