Nice to Kafka you

       Reading Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion, makes one see many similarities between this piece of writing and Kafka's writing. In this piece of writing it is basically talking about the symbolism of a meal and how in literature it can mean different things. One thing he mentions is the symbolism of communion. A meal is a very friendly ritual as in it is shared with some of the closest people in you life. "The act of taking food into our bodies is so personal that we really only want to do it with people we're really comfortable with" (Foster 8). Here, Foster is talking about how sharing a meal with someone is very personal. This is why when you go on a first date with someone dinner can often times feel awkward and strange because you are not as personal with that person then your friends or family. When you eat dinner with your family it feels very comfortable and open because in your life you are very open with those people. When people are not allowed to eat with other people it makes them isolated from the group. One can see examples of this is Kafka. Gregor, when turned into a bug, never again shares a meal with his family. In fact, in the end Gregory dies from starvation. One can see that Gregor was isolated from the most personal ritual a family can have. A meal also shows that the people around you are willing to take a risk for you. By sharing there resources with you they are showing you that they trust you and that they are willing to take that risk for you. "While it doesn't feel particularly important thematically and, moreover, it’s as far from traditional notions of communion as we can get, it nevertheless constitutes a shared experience."(Foster 9) Here, Foster talks about the sharing experience of food. Sharing like stated before is showing that the person is willing to take a risk and share a human need with you. This shows the very personal relationship you have with that person. We can see in Kafkas writing that the family is not willing to take the risk of losing there resources    for Gregor. By not giving him proper food and letting him starve it shows how isolated Gregor is from the family.

        In the Piece by Foster Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires IT is basically talking about what vampirism is and relating all the Dracula story's to literature. Vampirism is basically a person who is selfish and does not have the desire to help other people. In turn this person often lures people in his his power or attractiveness to turn them into him. "Always, he’s alluring, dangerous, mysterious, and he tends to focus on beautiful, unmarried (which in the social vision of nineteenth-century England meant virginal) women. And when he gets them, he grows younger, more alive (if we can say this of the undead), more virile even.
Meanwhile, his victims become like him and begin to seek out their own victims." Here, Foster is talking about the traits a vampire has. Like stated before they often lure people in to make them more like them. This can relate to Kafkas The Metamorphosis. One can see that the Dad is symbolic of a vampire or Dracula and what he does in the story is turn his wife ans sister against Gregor. At the beginning of the story one can see that the Dad hates Gregor once he is turned into a bug. The mother and sister through the story progressively start to dislike Gregor more and more. One can see that this is much like a vampire in that they turn there pray into them. Foster also talks wbout how vampires suck the life out of people they think are lesser then them. 'He wakes up in the morning – actually the evening, now that I think about it – and says something like, 'In order to remain unread, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own.'” (Foster 21) One can see a similarity  to Gregor. When Gregor dies it is because his family has put him in bad conditions and literally sucked the life out of him. Because his Dad thinks Gregor is less then him he leaves him to die and sucks all human remaining traits from him. In fosters Two pieces one can see many similarities with Kafka and the examples given are just a few of the vast number of similarities.