The modernist movement aroused in the late 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century affecting all kinds of arts including fine art and literature as a consequence of the revision of all the previously formed cultural and philosophic concepts and ideas. Modernism had been developing in the conditions of social and historical crisis which resulted in the World War I. Thus, new moods and concepts caused new fundamental changes in the traditional and realistic perception of the world in minds and in literature, in particular. “Modern artists were often critical of the status quo and frequently challenged middle class values” (Barret 20).
Though the first-rate modernists Franz Kafka and Knut Hamsun were born in different countries with a different life stories they both had a lot in common and an undoubtful literary success. Knut Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. But due to his ideological sympathy to fascism Hamsun had been forgotten and repudiated by the Norwegian nation for many years. Though Franz Kafka died early because of tuberculosis, the works he had written and his manner of writing gave birth to a literary term “Kafkaesque” that describes this very style in which he wrote his last manuscripts before death. Hence both authors have made a remarkable influence on the literature of the 20th century and other writers expressing the modernist ideas of a search of a person`s inner freedom and psychological nature against the background of the society he lives in.
One cannot avoid catching himself at the though of admitting a lot of familiar features after having read Franz Kafka`s famous short novel “The Metamorphosis”(1915) and the breakthrough novel of Knut Hamsun “The Hunger” (1890). Both works are written from the 1st person. “The Metamorphosis” is a story told by a middle-class salesman, Gregor Samsa, who woke up one morning and realized that he had turned into a giant vermin. “The Hunger” is a monologue told by an unnamed protagonist, a writer who is constantly in the state of hunger and looking for any job to earn his living. Both works were based on the authors` personal experience. “This period in Oslo (then called Kristiania) subjected him to the soul-searing trials which Hamsun later immortalized in his first successful novel, Hunger” (Knaplund 170).
The protagonist of Kafka`s “The Metamorphosis” has much in common with its author. The author himself just like Gregor Samsa was a busy sales clerk snowed under with work sacrifying himself to his family. When turning into an insect, Gregor perceives the fact as a chance to change his everyday dull lifestyle. “How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense”, he thought, but that was something he was unable to because he was use d to sleeping in his right, and in his present state couldn`t get into this position” (Kafka 4). Kafka had never explained why Gregor turned into a bug or why he chose an insect as an allegory. “Being or becoming …