Question

What were you trying to achieve in your Blackout Poem? ​
Why did you select certain words? Pick at least one word and explain its connotations (what feelings/associations come with that word). Sentence stem: I chose the word time because it connotes ______________. ​
How is The Metamorphosis Modernist/Absurdist? You can refer to the text as a whole or the specific page you chose/poem you created. Refer to your textbook notes on page 181. Screenshots below.

Answer 1

1) What I was trying to achieve in my blackout poem
I wanted to create a short, concentrated mood that captures the emotional core of The Metamorphosis — alienation, the collapse of identity, and the slow narrowing of possibility. By erasing most of the page and leaving only a few words, I aimed to mimic Gregor’s shrinking world: reduced options, compressed time, and a tightening inward focus. The visual black space around the words is meant to feel like the walls of a room closing in, and the remaining words form a stark, fragmentary sentence that invites the reader to supply the missing context (just as Kafka’s story forces us to fill in gaps around an absurd event).

2) Why I selected certain words (example)
I picked words that would reinforce isolation, inevitability, and a sense of stasis—words that are emotionally dense so the poem can carry more feeling with fewer syllables. I also chose words that create contrast when read together (e.g., a domestic word next to an abstract one) to echo the story’s clash between the mundane and the surreal.

I chose the word time because it connotes relentlessness, memory, and the shrinking of opportunity—how moments pass without repair and how a person’s life can be measured by what they can no longer do. In the context of Gregor’s story, time suggests both the ongoing routine he once served (work, trains, schedules) and the slow decay after his transformation.

3) How The Metamorphosis is Modernist and Absurdist
Modernist features:
- Fragmentation and interior focus: Kafka concentrates on Gregor’s inner sensations and the family’s shifting reactions rather than on linear plot development, emphasizing psychological truth over external explanation.
- Alienation and dislocation: Gregor’s separation from work, family, and language (he can’t communicate) reflects modernist concerns about individuals cut off by urban life, bureaucracy, and changing social roles.
- Break with traditional realism: the story treats an impossible event (a man turning into an insect) seriously and shows the emotional consequences, using symbolism and ambiguity rather than moralizing closure.

Absurdist features:
- The irrational as everyday: the central absurdity—Gregor’s metamorphosis—is presented matter-of-factly, and the family’s bureaucratic, self-interested responses heighten the senselessness of human relations.
- Breakdown of meaningful communication: Gregor’s inability to converse and the family’s failure to understand him show the futility of trying to restore order or meaning.
- Existential loneliness and lack of resolution: the story ends without a neat explanation or redemption; it emphasizes helplessness, meaninglessness, and the arbitrariness of suffering.

(These points align with typical textbook notes on Modernism/Absurdism — e.g., focus on fragmentation, alienation, subjective experience, and the use of paradox/irrationality to reveal existential truths.)