It’s just a novel in which a man named Gregor one day wakes up turned into a giant bug. His family, whom he had been supporting entirely, don’t know what to make of it of course. He loses his job and is pretty helpless as a giant bug.
His sister takes care of him and brings him rotting food which he likes to eat. However his mother catches a glimpse of him once and freaks out, and the father, thinking Gregor had attacked the mother, drives him back into his room with thrown apples.
Time goes on, and the rest of the family get other jobs, and Gregor’s sister grows tired of taking care of him, as do the rest of the family. Upon hearing this, Gregor understands (they never thought he did) and he goes back into his bedroom and…dies.
Wow.
I mean, it was a good story, but I’m not really sure what the point of it was. Whenever you try to apply things that make sense - him supporting the whole family, him being tired of being a salesman, his family finding a life without him, it all kind of hits a brick wall when you remember he was turned into a GIANT BUG.
I do recommend it. It’s a fairly quick read, and interesting enough.
I think that the point was that Gregor’s life before turning into the insect was just as insignificant as it was after. He was, in a way, an insect to begin with; the change only highlights how little his life was worth. He was accomplishing nothing, so the change only highlighted that.
I have a button I sometimes wear that says, “Every have one of those mornings? – Gregor Samsa.” Few people get it, but those that do, love it.
That’s a pretty awesome button. And now I would get it!
ETA: But - he wasn’t accomplishing things? Wasn’t he trying to get his sister through school, and feed the rest of his family?
I’ve read - maybe here - that the story can be seen as a response to Kafka’s own health problems and the feeling that he was a burden to his family. I don’t know how well founded that is, but I think it adds a poignant element to the story that you don’t necessarily get from the text.
Have you read “The Trial”? It has the same atmosphere of self-loathing and helplessness and incomprehension. Maybe he just got his jollies from writing stories like that.
If you are freaked by that, don’t read *In the Penal Colony *.
My take on “The Metamorphosis” is that it is exploring the theme of alienation through fantasy and projection. Gregor’s phsyical metamorphosis is a metaphor for the mental metamorphosis of a man alienated from his family and from society as a whole.
I sure it’s just me but most of Kafka’s work (to me) comes off as an exercise in writing. It doesn’t seem to have any moral underpinning or even a point, it’s more like an assignment in a creative writing class.
I’m with **Marley23 **and **grude **- I took it as a thin metaphor for being a breadwinner who becomes incapacitated.
One other thing I took from the story was that after the family stopped depending on him, and cared about him less and less, they became more self-sufficient and better off. They were more selfish than he had ever been, too. The horror comes from his family’s response every bit as much as his being a bug.
That is awesome. I desperately need to get it on a t-shirt.
As for the work itself, I also agree with with grude that it reflects the transformation from breadwinner to burden that comes with age or infirmity. I don’t agree with the interpretation that Gregor was initially worthless/dehumanized/insignificant and that the outward metamorphosis simply reflected his inward/societal state because I don’t think that working to support your family is at all worthless or insignificant, especially if it also involved putting his sister through school. (I seem to remember that it did, but I haven’t read the story in years.)
I think I also like the intrepretation of being old and infirm. He was bringing home a steady salary, and his parents and sister were all living off him. She was going to violin lessons, or school, or some such thing.
His boss totally didn’t give any leeway, either! Five years of working, not one sick day, and the first time he doesn’t arrive, he comes to his house and starts banging on the door. :eek: can you imagine?
I just want to say this is one of those stories when you hear the general description your first reaction is “thats the stupidest premise I have ever heard”. Then you read it and its moves you or stirrs something in your heart/mind…perhaps you are not even sure what exactly but it puzzles you or intriques you or makes you think or ask questions.
I think that writing/art/tv/various creative endeavors that fits that description are some of the best there are. Its like making a five star meal out of spam and ritz crackers. Even if it ain’t the best of the best, the fact the person that did it even got close says something about their skill. And the consumer gets something they never even thought possible.
I remember when I first read that story. It bugged (heh) me on several levels. As others have posted there is probably more than one “moral” you take away from it. And they are probably all a bit on the dark/life is cruel side.
One thing I got out it was the need to question your assumptions. Gregor expected some loyalty back from the company he slaved for, but got none. He was also supporting his family because his parents were old and his sister young, but really when given the need, they were perfectly able of supporting themselves, and even happier that way. Gregor’s whole life, even before the transformation, seemed a pointless struggle.
I read it as someone with a debilitating mental or physical illness becoming odious to the people who once loved him. Once he truly realizes what a burden and disgrace he is to his family, he dies of…sadness or loneliness, I guess. I thought it was a pretty powerful metaphor, and one of Kafka’s best works (the rest of his stuff tends to be a bit…incomprehesible).
I read Kafka’s Metamorphosis as part of a class during high school, in the early 1980’s. We understood it as an extremely allegorical tale. Gregor represented the Soviet government, originally focussed on throwing off the yoke of monarchy and feudalism and helping the working classes gain strength and political clout, later becoming a parasitic unproductive behemoth generating fear and loathing amongst the People it was designed to benefit, and losing efficacy over time. We read it along with The Crocodile and The Phoenix, which were also both very allegorical.
[\Quote=bup] One other thing I took from the story was that after the family stopped depending on him, and cared about him less and less, they became more self-sufficient and better off. They were more selfish than he had ever been, too. The horror comes from his family’s response every bit as much as his being a bug.
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Meanwhile, the allegorical People, if they learned to just live their lives and essentially ignore the Party and its politics, could really (eventually) achieve better than the State could offer.
Interpreting Kafka’s Metamorphosis as a critical allegory for the Soviet system seemed to fit moderately well, provided we didn’t try too hard to figure out what rotten apples or other elements of the story represented in the global political scene.
[Try The Story of Ah Q for similar treatment of revolutionary China.] However, it seemed like the teacher was pushing especially hard on the anti-Soviet angle for interpretation . I felt I could just as easily see the allegory as criticisms of the Capitalist paradigm (slaving for a company and getting no loyalty in return, etc.) or Church or even elected government’s turning from a benevolent institution into a parasitic drain on the society it was designed to manage – good intentions turned into wasteful pests. I was definitely questioning assumptions all around.
Did your teacher mention the story was written in 1915, before the Russian Revolution even happened? I mean, maybe the story can be applied to the USSR, but it sure as shit wasn’t what Kafka was writing about.
It has also been argued that Samsa’s father killing him by penetrating him with an apple is symbolic of the loss of sexual innocence (apple? Eden? Geddit?) of some sort which his father takes as a barrier between them. Gregor takes the abandonment as a betrayal and dies from despair.
And now I would get it!