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Understanding the cultural context of a story can often help our understanding of some aspect of the story itself. The social, political, and economic currents surrounding a writer can, and usually do, affect the writer’s literary creation. Sometimes this influence is direct, as evidenced by Tim O’Brien’s descriptions of the Vietnam War in “How to Tell a True War Story.” Sometimes it less defined, as is the case for “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kakfa. Sometimes it seems so slight that the cultural context of a work may be important only because it seems reasonable to assume that all writers are to some degree products of their time. However, we can only appreciate if and how a story is responding to society when we explore the story’s cultural context.
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Choose one of the document collections on the left to explore a cultural context further.
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