The Metamorphosis Review

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

- Franz Kafka

The Metamorphosis (Original title: Die Verwandlung) is a novella by the 20th-century writer Franz Kafka and is often cited as one of the seminal fictional works of the time and his pseudo-autobiography. The protagonist, Gregor Samsa is a traveling salesman stuck in the churn between his family and work. The story begins when Samsa wakes up one morning only to find his body turned into a bug for no apparent reason. This reason is then never explained in the book. Thus proceeds the story of his metamorphosis from a worrying man into a literal bug that eats rotten food. The story implores the effects of alienation, isolation, and sacrifice with the added pinch of betrayal most of these being drawn from Kafka’s personal life.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

The whole story of metamorphosis takes place in a small apartment in which Gregor lives with his family consisting of his parents and a younger sister. The truly “KAFKAESQUE” (real word, google it) nature of this story is shown within the first few pages where immediately after waking up as a vermin Gregor’s greatest worry is that he gets to work on time.

Later on, things settle down (only after his mother faints and his father beats him with a rolled-up newspaper thinking he is a monster) and the family settles with a new arrangement with the “vermin”. From here Gregor’s family starts calling him “it”. He always stays in his room and no one cares about him except for his sister who cleans his room and brings him food scraps to eat. The rift between Gregor and his father can be described with the single word “dysfunctional” who rejects him as his son as soon as he stops bringing in money to the table. To support the house Gregor’s father takes up a job as a security guard while the ladies start sewing clothes to sell. After an undisclosed amount (could have a month or even a year) of time later Gregor takes up a real liking to being alone and carefree. This clearly shows his shift from an obedient employee to a carefree vermin but still, he accepts all his hardships without complaint.

After a few incidents with some outlandish tenants and the maid. The sister finally calls him a burden on them and that they have to get rid of “it”.

“I won’t pronounce the name of my brother in front of this monster, and so all I say is: we have to try and 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.”

Wounded in the incidents and heartbroken by his sister’s betrayal Gregor loses his will to live and finally dies in his sleep only to be found by the maid the next morning. His death doesn’t even matter to the family and almost immediately they go to a park to celebrate his “good-riddance”.

“Then his head sank to the floor of its own accord and from his nostrils came the last faint flicker of his breath.”

Kafka’s portrayal of Gregor and his family in this story lays down some truth about living in a modern-capitalist society where you are worthy only as long as you keep your head down and grind at your job mindlessly however hard or dumb it may be.

“What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion!”

Soon after the transformation, the family had to fend for themselves and also support an ugly vermin whom they hated even if he was their son/brother. The sister supported Gregor at first, but soon after, love faded away because she never got anything in return. Kafka’s characters are plucked right from his personal life and show how difficult his upbringing was and that he felt like a vermin among his family members himself.

All that mess that Gregor has to put up makes him less human every day and in the end, all he can do to ease his pain is to curl up and die.

In conclusion, the Metamorphosis is a truly fascinating story that causes the reader to contemplate the working of modern society and the roles of an individual in it. Without lingering on the cause of the transformation Kafka shifts the flow of the story from an obvious to an unorthodox direction justifying its place as a masterpiece in modern literature even though it lacks the “cruel complexity” that Kafka is more famously known for.

The text is nearly 90 pages and can be read over a weekend.No summary or analysis can do it justice. Highly Recommended.

Written by Shoray Singhal