The+Metamorphosis


 * Welcome to unit, "What if you woke up as an animal or something other than human?" Can you imagine that? One day you go to sleep, everything is normal, and the next morning you wake up not human.**

**Well, that's what we're going to be thinking about here in this unit. The primary text we're going to be reading here is called "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka. In this unit we're going to be focusing on issues such as isolation, alienation, duty to family, freedom and escape--just to name a few. If you think about the guiding question throughout all of this, it's this: What does it mean to be an outcast?**



__**About "The Metamorphosis"**__**:**

One morning Gregor Samsa wakes up to find that after a night of bad dreams he's woken to find himself completely transformed into something, well, not human. With his family knocking on his door to get him to work and his supervisor also there, Gregor opens the door and reveals himself in his new form. Needless to say, his sister screams, his mother faints, his supervisor runs out in panic, and his father freaks out and kicks Gregor back into his room. The rest of the story is about how the family deals with Gregor's new self and how Gregor comes to grips with his new "role" in the family. It's an interesting story of change and family, of responsibility and dealing with adversity.

__**Unit Focus:**__

__Themes__:

This unit is designed to get you thinking about life and consciousness, identity, family obligations, and issues of treating those the way you wish to be treated. What happens when someone you love changes into something you find repulsive? And again, as in other units you'll consider doing, how do we treat someone that is different than we are?

The unit is also designed to think about: How does this relate to me and my life? No one is going to wake up one morning as something other than human, but by focusing on the themes of the story and not only on the story details themselves, we can better connect our lives to those of the characters. Hopefully, maybe even learn a little something about ourselves along the way.

__Skills__:

This unit will focus on the following skills-
 * Background knowledge (activating schema)
 * Making connections (text to self, text to text, text to world)
 * Questioning (fat & skinny questions. What's the difference and how can we use them to go deeper?)
 * Making predictions and inferences (what do I think will happen next? What can I figure out the missing details based on clues given by the author?)
 * Understanding how an author uses story elements and lit. devices to tell a story (how can we identify them and use them ourselves?)
 * Summarizing a text (re-telling just the important details about a text)
 * Vocabulary (what is confusing? How do I find the definition to a word I don't know? How do I remember the definition?)
 * Paragraph and essay construction (how can I use a structure to clearly express my ideas about something?)

Click here for your 1st assignment