In the following essay, Hollan identifies a balance between unreal and realist elements in "The Metamorphosis," finding that in many cases Kafka has "charged a specific realistic element of the story with a specific non-realistic or spiritual value."
In allegory, symbolism, and surrealism—the three genres are in this respect, at least, indistinguishable— the writer mixes unrealistic elements into a realistic situation. Thus, Kafka, in "Metamorphosis," puts into the realistic, prosaic environment of the Samsa household a situation that is, to put it mildly, unrealistic: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from a troubled dream, he found himself changed in his bed to some monstrous kind of vermin." Kafka's strategy does not in essence differ from the techniques of Spenser and Bunyan: though they used for the unreal elements allegorical names, they, too, set them in realistic.....
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