Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”
After many years, I had the chance to reread Kafka’s Metamorphosis. When I first encountered the piece, I was enthralled by the thought experiment Kafka pursued in the story. What if you wake up in the morning and you have turned into a little bug, but you still have your full consciousness? You can still understand what human beings are saying but they cannot understand you anymore and they see you a non-human terrifying, little creature to run away from. How would you feel? How would you cope with this situation?
Rereading the story, which I also once saw performed as a well-executed play—I realized that the story is much more than taking a radically new perspective on life could be. The piece is a family story and not simply the story of an individual man (Gregor Samsa) who is struck by a terrible fate of waking up as a bug who has to learn to use six little legs to get out of bed.
Kafka explores in great detail how his parents and sister cope with a family member turning suddenly becoming a terrifying animal rather than the familiar good human being. Kafka radically examines what family ties mean. Do they still hold when a family member has metamorphosed into a creature that is rejected by everyone else in society? How far do your bonds of loyalty to your child or brother go even if he or she previously made it possible for you to have a decent living? Should you cut all ties and protect society from this strange creature or continue to treat him or her as is a regular member of the family?
Except for a few pages toward the end when the story becomes a bit disgusting, I enjoyed reading the story now as a story of family life.
You can find a free e-book version of the text here: [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5200]