Modernism is a technique, thought, discussion, creative work or genre of art and literature that breaks from the classical mold or that is considered cutting-edge.

Kafka was part of the modernist movement. The modernist movement took place in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. It was a moving apart from convention and doing something different. From art to writing to architecture, things started to change. The realist movement focused on reality, while this modernist movement focused pushing those bonds, to see the world in a new way and reach new possibilities. Kafka’s characters did just that. In the Metamorphosis, we have Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning and finds his outward appearance has been transformed into a horrible, tremendous, hideous bug. Shunned by his family and co-workers and left without any other options, he eventually allows himself to perish and is thrown away with the trash.
Commentary on the fragile nature of human life and the strained relationships we have with family and friends. Kafka himself had a strained relationship with his father and had trouble making friends and relating to others. This sort of extreme had not been done before.

Virginia Woolf, one of the founders of the movement known as Modernism, is one of the most important woman writers in English. Virginia Wolf portrays the gender differences. She notes these differences in referencing how they have changed throughout history and by referencing historical figures like Shakespeare and Pericles. I thought it was interesting how she notes that the female position has not increased greatly throughout the centuries. Pericles had said in his funeral oration that “self respecting women should be neither seen nor heard,” and to find that several centuries later in the time of Shakespeare men were still thinking along those same lines, made me realize that there was very little social advancement at all throughout the centuries. It even frustrated me to think that, in a sense, thousands of years had been dedicated to solely male social advancement and barely any to female social advancement.