关键词: 弗兰茨·卡夫卡; 生存困境; 变形; 自我建构; 虚拟世界

Abstract:

With the development of modern information technology, the application and popularization of network platforms have increasingly deepened their impact on individual subjective operations and regulations, and have also created metamorphoses in the new era. In this paper, we provide an in-depth textual analysis and inductive summarization to reread Franz Kafka’s classic novel The Metamorphosis in order to explore Kafka’s description of the survival strategies of ciphers in the interaction between real life and the virtual world. We will also explain the important ideological implications of his transformational aesthetics concerning the individual self-construction of one’s virtual personality in contemporary cyberspace. Kafka constructed the idea of human resistance to alienation in the real world via the infinite spiritual demands of a limited life, since the self-construction of individuals in the virtual world has alleviated the survival dilemma and spiritual crises of modern people to some extent. Since people are currently experiencing more complex and diverse lifestyles, as well as being affected by many social and personal factors in self-construction, metamorphosis has become a common state of survival and resistance. Searching for a harmonious state in the world, amidst reality and virtualization, freedom and shackles, is the ultimate purpose of humanity.

Keywords: Franz Kafka; survival dilemma; metamorphosis; self-construction; virtual world