As oneo f the unwashed myself, i HAAAATE when teachers do this. sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I could honestly find a made up “deeper meaning” in “ass goblins of Auschwitz” if i set my mind to it.
My take as well. Samsa goes from being the self- sufficient breadwinner to being not only a burden but hideous and loathesome to himself and his family, all in a manner more dreamlike than real. It’s about the loss of self, both to one’s own self and to the world at large, particulary to those closest to you. It plays on the fear that something could happen to the reader that makes them burdensome and unrecognizable as the person that they once were to themselves or to those who love them, and it’s horrifying.
Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, but I agree that turning non-allegorical stories into allegories ruins them and it’s a bad way to teach.
I’ve always heard it was an allegory for Kafka’s TB. What I find most interesting is that Gregor is never really part of the family. He works to support them but for his family its more of a monetary arrangement than family obligation. When he turns into the vermin, it’s easy for them justifying excluding him from the inner-circle of 3, but is it really any different than before he metamorphorsized?
I think that the point of the story is more than just and infirmaries of age, and less than an allegory. Samsa is living a dismal life to begin with; changing to an insect is a metaphor for the fact that he was always insignificant. He went through life like a cockroach, accomplishing nothing at all. Certainly his job gave him no satisfaction, and he had no wife or children. By becoming a insect, it was just a reflection of his own insignificance. The point is that you need to do something with your life, or you’re no better than an insect.
Many of the themes throughout Kafka’s writing derive heavily from his relationship to his father. His father was extremely and often inexplicably critical and overbearing with him, and imposed a crushing, life-long psychic burden on Kafka, that obsessed him and in many ways drove him to write many of the the things he did. Kafka didn’t entirely see himself as someone writing purely for publication–the great majority of his writings were published posthumously, by his friend Max Broad, who didn’t burn the manuscripts after Kafka’s death, as Kafka had requested.
If you really want to know what Kafka was about, read the Letter to his Father (Brief an den Vater), a hundred-page attempt to explain to his father the emotional effect he’d had on his son. After you read this, a lot of the things in The Metamorphosis (and The Trial) make more sense.
In fact, the term “kafkaesque” to refer to something that is nightmarishly bureaucractic really is a misnomer, IMHO, because for Kafka, the bureaucracies in his writings were merely metaphors for his psychological state of mind. He actually used legal proceedings and bureaucracy mostly for comedic effect, and when he first read The Trial out-loud to his friends he mostly laughed. He was a bureaucrat himself, and could see the humor in exaggerating it.
To experience the same humor from Kafka without the bureaucratic context, read Amerika, which is a hilarious and fabulous account of characters journeying through the the U.S., a place which Kafka himself never actually visited.
(Missed edit window…) Indeed, one of the things that Kafka’s father did was constantly call into doubt his son’s ability to be an “upright, man of the house,” making a “decent” living to support a family.
This brings to mind the debate as to how much the personal motive of an author matters as to the meaning of his or her work.
Perhaps Kafka only had his relationship with his father in mind when writing “The Metamorphosis”. Unless you know about his relations with his father, there is no way of knowing this by simply reading the story. However, many people who have no idea about his retations with his father have read the story and evidently got something out of it.
Hence my point is that the story can best be read as being about alienation in general, and not narrowly about Kafka’s alientation from his father specifically.
Yes, and the appeal that his writing eventually acquired was almost despite his own efforts–I don’t think his personal motives matter so much as that the majority of his works came out when and where they did, between WWI and WWII, in the middle of Europe (and in German).
I’ve always taken it as the family exploiting him (making him put her through school and do all the breadwinning) to the point of taking his humanity away.
I did read the book during my graduate studies while in a class on Magical Reality. One point being made is to compare what happened to Gregor as a major illness, such as cancer, and how everyone in family tries to handle it. It become such a major drain on them that everyone is happy that he is gone.
I read it this way as well. He was doing all the “right” things, taking care of his family and being a hardworking loyal employee, but doing those things didn’t serve him well in the end. There was no reward for good behavior.
I read it in high school and my english teacher was a total stoner so I was on my own as to what it meant, but what I took from it was that if you lived like a bug (family doormat, corporate lackey) you would die like a bug. Society doesn’t want what’s best for you, it wants what’s best for it.
I don’t mean that in a negative way necessarily, just that you do have to prioritize your own needs along with the needs of others. What you want has to stay somewhere near the top of the list if you’re ever going to get it.
It’s a story that explores the theme of what would happen if you woke up as a giant insect. Or vermin, whichever the case. It posits one way your family and job would react if such a thing occurred.
I do not believe it ‘represents’ anything more than this. Kafka wanted to tell a story, wanted to see what would happen. Of course, humans being what they are, he brought much of his own experiences and insight into the story. So maybe, subconsciously, his father or the impending Russian revolution were weighing heavily upon him, and this allowed him to better capture the mood of claustrophobic helplessness, or perhaps even toss in some kind of symbol. But I do not believe there is any one-to-one relation between the characters or events of the story and a grand statement on some higher idea.
It’s an interesting story because, given the reactions of Gregor’s family and workplace, it could happen to any of us. Maybe sometimes people just wake up as bugs. But I think it does a disservice to both author and story to not say that it is a first and foremost a tale about what happens when a young man suddenly finds himself an insect - nothing more, nothing less.
Kafka was writing about what it is like to be a member of a family/society which devalues and demeans you no matter what you do – I always read the turning into an insect as simply Samsa becoming a physical manifestation of what he meant to his family/boss all along – less than human, disgusting and creepy, and ultimately of little interest, like an insect. It is horrifyingly comic.
I relate to Kafka’s work on such a visceral level I can’t read it anymore. It’s way beyond allegory, more like nightmare. Just like nightmare.
I can see that if you did not personally experience anything like what Kafka did, it would seem artificial or pointless. It isn’t.
If you liked this, BTW, read Philip Roth’s novella THE BREAST, in which a New Jersey professor wakes up to discover he has been transformed overnight into a gigantic tit.
I haven’t read the story in a while, but for some reason, I was under the impression that it was Kafka’s expression that physical attributes would make one behave in certain ways. So while Gregor was trying to behave like himself right after being turned into a bug, he eventually got more and more ‘buglike’, based on what was easier and/or more natural for him due to his new body and abilities.
So I guess I’m saying that Kafka felt that, say, everyone’s brains were suddenly placed into different bodies (people, animals, etc), those new physical characteristics would be the most important factor in how one behaves. Does that make sense?
Not at all. For what it’s worth, he didn’t seem like a nationalistic *America Uber Alis *type of guy, either. But I have to admit I never even thought to find out anything about him beyond the fact that he showed up and taught each day.
Well, that’s why I made a point of separating for emphasis the questioning-your-assumptions issue. Yeah, I questioned the allegorical assumptions the teacher provided, expanding them enough to see Metamorphosis as criticizing all socio-political institutions – American, British, Chinese, etcetera, not just the Soviet system – as starting out with benevolent intentions and turning into an unwanted drain on the intended target of the intended help.
From this discussion, I like what MoeJoe takes away from the story.
–G!
I had to hear you wonderous stories
. Chris Squire (Yes)
. Wonderous Stories
Does the story even need a point? Even without making sense, it still somehow manages to work.
In all seriousness, I ask - is that what is called hermeneutics? As is evident, I really don’t understand the term. Thanks!