Home>Possessed>My thoughts on Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was an existentialist writer who was born July 3, 1883 in Prague. He studied law at the University of Prague, but would eventually take a civil service position while writing in his spare time. He would publish few works in his lifetime; most of his works were published posthumously by Max Brod against Kafka's wishes (he was given the works by Kafka and instructed to destroy them.) Franz Kafka had a poor relationship with his father, to whom he had feelings of inferiority throughout his life and in Kafka's mind had a constant and great influence throughout his life and work. He contracted tuberculosis in 1917 and died June 3, 1924.

Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka, a review

My first thoughts before I begin, is the fact that Kafka as a writer has been abused, used, overused and clichéd by the generation succeeding him...to ad nausem. Its fashionable to say that you have read Kafka, and its even more hep to say that you like Kafka. On the other hand, its equally fashionable to decry all that is Kafka and call it some deranged cult that exists as some one-off exception would, ignored and inconsequential. 

Its natural for you to question me and prod me, what makes me holier than thou? I really don't have much to offer in defense. Silence is my only defense. Or is there, some more deeper reason. Well, for one as the section says, the things in this area of the site have been 'possessed' by me, and they have in some sense 'possessed' me. 

My first encounter with Kafka dates back to 1995, when I picked up the 'Selected Short Stories' of Kafka. The first story in this book was 'The conversations with the supplicant.' And I must honestly admit, without being a prude that till today I find this narrative a bit over the top. I must have read it over twice, but it takes an immense amount of concentration and taxes the sensibilities at some point. (Kafka fans, please done hate me as you are reading this, I just felt to be honest is to treat Kafka with more respect). 

BTW, I got to know of Kafka first somewhere in 1994, when I was reading a Rushdie interview and he proclaimed that Kafka was one of his best authors. I had no two ways about Rushdie and his work, I just plain adored him. If he liked Kafka, by induction, there was no reason why I would not find Kafka to my taste. 

It was only when I read Metamorphosis and In The Penal Colony, that I was gripped with some sense of what Kafkanism actually meant.  

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."(Kafka)

The story begins with Gregor Samsa turning into some giant insect or possibly a vermin. Gregor is the prime bread earner for the family consisting of his parents and sister. No where does the story even venture to try and describe why and how does Gregor turn into an insect. Its inconsequential to the primary plot and is best left unanswered. Neither does the story clearly tell us what kind of insect has Gregor turned into. Most of my peers who have read it, feel Kafka was clearly making Gregor out to be a vermin, a roach (a cockroach), though the story itself refers to Gregor as a dung beetle. So that might be some hint of what Kafka actually had in mind, a hard shelled insect with multiple legs just like the beetle.

I have read this story more than 5 times, and every time I visualized Gregor as some huge tortoise. The beauty of the whole puzzle from a literary point of view is that this puzzle is abstract, it is now left to the reader to drive his imagination wild and possibly conjure up whatever insect comes into his mind at that point of time. Here's one interpretation I found on the web. Have a look.

This picture shows Gregor as some huge vermin lying on his back in his room. Since the story is set in the 1800's, the look and the feel of the room seems to go along with it. 

That brings me to yet another aspect of Kafka's writing, it is visually impaired, yet very provocative. What I mean by that is it leaves a lot of sub-stories (not relevant to the plot) unsaid and just assumes that the reader shall visualize the same using some other props of the story line. 

To continue, Gregor one fine day finds himself to have become some kind of huge insect. Not only has he physically been transformed, his bodily tastes have also changed. For example, Gregor finds that he can no longer eat the food he enjoyed for so long years, now he only likes rotten food, smelly meat. He can no longer drink milk or even get himself to have a look at fresh fruits. He does not have teeth, and hence cannot chew into stuff.

It seemed strange to Gregor that among all the different noises of eating he kept picking up the sound of their chewing teeth, as if this were a sign to Gregor that you needed teeth to eat with and that even with the best make of toothless jaws you couldn’t do a thing.  “I’m hungry enough,” Gregor said to himself, full of grief, “but not for these things.  Look how these roomers are gorging themselves, and I’m dying!” (Kafka).

At this point, I must mention that though bodily and physically Gregor gets transformed, quite a large part of his mental get up still is the same. He still loves his family, he still wants to be the conscientious son, he still is afraid of his employer and still continues to think like a human being. This aspect touched a common chord within me. As a kid, I often used to wonder, what if animals had a smart brain within them too. How would we (humans) ever ever get to know of the same. Until the first animal (or human) managed to bridge the gap, how would we ever know for sure that animals don't have smart heads within their bodies. You might dismiss it as some interesting conjecture, but is it not very true, please don't label all this as meta-physical and escape out of the consequences. The primary question is, how does information ever flow out of a closed system? Gregor in this case, is the ideal example of the closed system castrated by the world around him, for they knew less than his reality. Think about it.

Gregor's family shuns him, yet out of some familial urges (and a vague hope that he would transform back), keep him in a locked room in the house. Grete, his sister is the person who brings him his daily food and cleans his room. The family does not want to expose Gregor to the world( or to the charwoman) since it treats him like some kind of ignominy that has unawares befallen them. There is this sense of apparent disgust and "Oh God, why me?" kind of syndrome in each of the family's actions and speech. Even Grete, avoids Gregor's eye contact, and in the first few meetings makes it obvious, that she repulses his sight. The parents have never even seen him properly since the day they saw his metamorphosis. Realizing that he is visually very repulsive, Gregor hides below the bed with a sheet tucked over, whenever someone enters his room. He does this to allow the others to escape without any sense of appall.  

Gregor meanwhile has acquired the ability like any other vermin to climb on ceilings and loaf around. Grete notices this and decides to do away with his furniture, to give him more space to run around. In this exercise she needs her mom to help out. The mother somehow catches the sight of Gregor for the first time, and she becomes breathless and she faints. Grete pushes Gregor out of his room and shuts the door behind him. Soon his father returns, and sees Gregor in the room outside and knows something is wrong. 

This is where the censuring side of the family becomes apparent. In what ensues between father and (vermin) son, is a chase all around the house. The son being a vermin is quick and races really fast. The father then decides to shoot apples at his son, one of them which sticks onto his shell, and injures him badly. The stuck apple remains on his shell till the end, rotting and getting septic. 

After this incident, the mother weeps to save her son from sure death and that is where she claims her hope is that one day he shall reverse-transform. From that day, there is some degree of more humanity (wow!!) meted out to Gregor. Every evening the doors have been opened to him, and he can see what's happening in the living room. 

To run the expenses of the house, the family has rented out a certain part of the house to lodgers. One day, when Grete is playing the violin, the lodgers overhear her, and request her to play for them. She accedes, and as she is playing, Gregor slowly makes his way into the living room, to see her play. From the very start Gregor has been a doting brother, who loves his sister and her passion for music. 

Before he becomes an insect, it is shown that he had been saving to send his sister to Conservatium, an expensive music college. No one in the room notices Gregor out there. But then one of the lodgers does notice, and a scuttle ensues between the father and the lodger. For the father it is  an attempt to hide his secret ignominy and the lodger to investigate this mysterious creature. It ends with all three lodger's deciding to serve notice and take leave, which is too much of a blow for the already cash-strapped existence of the family. Grete at this point has this vituperative outbreak. 

“I won’t pronounce the name of my brother in front of this monster, and so all I say is: we have to try to get rid of it.  We’ve done everything humanly possible to take care of it and to put up with it; I don’t think anyone can blame us in the least. (Kafka)”

Gregor does not move expecting another apple attack, and is shown to be mentally in the devil-may-care mould at this point. Minutes pass, and when that none of that happens, he slowly turns and drags himself back into his room. As he is doing that, he realizes that his strength is failing him. For the past few weeks, he has hardly eaten, and has almost shunned food, and this weakness is the result of abhorring food. 

Once into the room, he experiences the claustrophobic disgust at his own existence, and being shunned by the only part of life he values around him, his family. The murder in that sense is already done. Gregor is a tired man( insect) and falls asleep soon.

"It's dead; it's lying there, dead as a doornail!" (Kafka)

Next morning the charwoman discovers him dead. She informs this in complete jubilation to the rest of the family. Also, she already has called the local butcher to come in chop Gregor and have him taken to the butcher shop. The grief of the family is complete, and so is the story.

The  story ends with Grete and parents taking a complete day off from work, to release the pent up pressures which the recent past had build up within them. They are now looking at the future with freshness and a new sense of hope.

Just a few ending thoughts. My personal feeling was Kafka created Gregor to be an insect to make the motif of the plot really explicit. I visualized it this way, even if for example lets say, Gregor had had his feet and hands amputed in some accident (which would have been equally abrupt) it would have served the exact purpose. What Kafka did was to demonstrate that heightened sense of transformation, and called it The Metamorphosis. 

If Gregor had indeed become a vegetable, then it shows the societies reluctance to give him respite, to accept his (mis) fortune and to take him into their fold. A person is valuable as long as he is useful. (Is Kafka hinting and hating the intrinsic capitalistic nature of the society around him? or as some of us would put it the bourgeois society.)

Also, as Gregor goes through a metamorphosis, the life of his family also changes. They now have to fend for themselves, hide an ignominy which they have in their backrooms. The father goes back to work, the sister to becoming more independent and the mother learns to survive without the support of a son. 

I also strongly believe, that though it is hinted that Gregor died because of lack of nutrition, the fact is that he dies of melancholy. He dies because he has doffed too much sorrow for one night. Claustrophobia (surrounded by a sea of sorrow) and tiredness take over. This combined with his own self revulsion (borne out of the world around him) kill him. (What a way to die!!)

Lastly, another Kafka book that I wish to recommend is The Trial. Its typical Kafkanisque and if you liked any of his works, there is no way you shall not treasure The Trial. The last sentence of the book is naked and violent, I must say. I remember Rushdie's take on the same in Shame. 

I recalled the last sentence of The Trial by Franz Kafka, the sentence in which Joseph K is stabbed to death. My Anna like Kafka's Joseph, died under a knife. Not so Sufiya Zinobia Hyder; but that sentence, the ghost of an epigraph hangs over her story still : 
'"Like a dog!" he said : it was as if he meant the shame of it to outlive him.'
(- Salman Rushdie, Shame)

August 5th 2001, Sunday - Amitabh Iyer