Ralph Waldo Emerson

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him life; it went out from him truth. It came to him shortlived actions; it went out from him immortal thoughts. It came to him business; it went from him poetry. It was dead fact; now it is quick thought. It can stand and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing (Emerson 56).

Emerson here expresses the process by which the writer observes the world, which for Emerson was preeminently the world of nature, and transforms this observation into art which expresses something the writer has learned about life. This process is evident in the work of all great writers, for they turn to the world in which they live for inspiration. It is this process that gives literature its truth, and it is that truth which speaks to us through the ages and which makes it possible for literature to soar and sing, no matter what its form otherwise.

The artist transforms the truth of his or her observations into something that itself has a shape, that express truth, and that engages others in the way it co

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Kafka saw the world in as cogent a way as Rousseau, but he found a different way to shape the truths he saw in Metamorphosis, a fantasy structured on truth. Kafka has become identified with a certain view of the nameless and faceless bureaucracy that stands over us all, caring not for our feelings, unconcerned with our pain, and operating as a vast machine with its own rules, crushing anything or anyone in its path with compete indifference. This operates at both the human level, with the bureaucracy of the state, and at a higher level, with the "bureaucracy" of the universe, equally indifferent and carrying out its mandate without compassion. The story of Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis tells a universal ruth as Kafka develops a fantastic situation and communicates an allegory about what it means to be human. The structure of Metamorphosis is the structure of a dream, as is often true of Kafka's fiction, though here the dream analogy is enhanced by the fact that Gregor awakens at the beginning as if from a dream and may indeed still be dreaming, though the dream and the reality are no longer separable. Sometimes the means of communication can be more opaque, requiring the reader to delve more deeply to find the meaning, a
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1640
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)