ABSTRACT

A nation might pride itself on being a free country, but many individuals
are unaware of the significance that their freedom holds. A philosophy thought
which concerns itself on the importance of human’s freedom is existentialism.
This thesis is designed to prove that Franz Kafka is an existentialist writer and to
find the uniqueness of his existentialism embedded in the writer’s great work
“The Metamorphosis”. By using moral-philosophical approach, this inquiry
incorporates information from literary and philosophy theories focusing on the
general ideas of existentialism philosophy. Such incorporation of material
provides a context for understanding the correlation between literature and
philosophy, the existentialism ideas which can be generally found in literary
works, and the different type of existentialism that of atheistic and theistic.
The general ideas of existentialism which consist of four elements: moral
individuation, choice and commitment, dread and anxiety, and alienation, have
their own characteristics which later are called ideal type of existentialism
philosophy. To prove that Franz Kafka is an existentialist literary writer, the
inquirer is to apply the ideal type to the studied object so it will show whether or
not Franz Kafka has set the existentialism thought in his writing.
Since the studied object is a literary work and the research model used is to
find some characteristics and uniqueness of the work from the applied theory, and
the finding analysis is to be explained by providing the proofs found in the studied
object using verbal description, this inquiry is termed as descriptive qualitative
research.
Through the characters and their characterizations in the studied object, it
is finally found that Franz Kafka has put his ideas about the importance of
human’s subjectivity and freedom in living a life. That symptom clearly includes
Kafka as one of the existentialist literary writers. His idea about God who is easily
spoken but never exists also explains that existentialism Kafka brings in The
Metamorphosis is an atheistic one.
Since existentialism is the most unique thought among other philosophies,
logically there should be something that differentiates Kafka’s existentialism from
other existentialists’. Through a deep analysis it is discovered that Franz Kafka
has two notions which cannot be found in other existentialist’s form of their
existentialism. This is the idea of being enslaved by others or a community which
is not realized by the targeted object and it is about the idea of death as the answer
to all human’s difficulties.
Finally, this research will never come to end because science grows
rapidly every single day which promises other researchers to hit upon new
findings.