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The Anxiety of Modern Man Caused by Capitalist Reification: A Comparative Study between Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Beckett’s Endgame

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2021, 34(1), pp.109-143
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
  • Received : March 8, 2021
  • Accepted : April 14, 2021
  • Published : April 30, 2021

Sohn, Yoon-Hee 1

1동국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to explore the anxiety of modern man becoming materialized from the standpoint of a political economy in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Beckett’s Endgame. Both of these works were made most interpretations about a person's existential anxiety and despair from the view of existence. Nevertheless, the anxiety in literary works is not a problem confined to the personal subjective experience, but social and historical problems. More specifically, this anxiety which arises from a capitalist commodity structure and the identification principle of Enlightenment is revealed in a dominant-subordinate relationship, subject’s reification. The protagonists in the two are uneasy about their consciousness becoming materialized due to political economy’s oppression and control. In order to illuminate the modern man’s anxiety, first of all, this paper establishes reification concept which arises from the capitalist commodity structure in History and Class Consciousness by György Lukács and which arises from instrumental rationality based on the identification principle of Enlightenment in Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Secondly, this paper examines the anxiety that Gregor Samsa’s existence and his consciousness are becoming materialized as he degenerates into a commodity or a thing in a capitalist economic system by applying Lukács’ reification concept to Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Thirdly, this paper illuminates the anxiety that the existence and consciousness of Clov and Hamm are becoming materialized as the relations between the two degenerate into material relations by applying Adorno and Horkheimer’s reification concept based on the identification of Enlightenment to Beckett’s Endgame.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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