A digital conversation with one of the most loyal followers of Susan’s Bookshelves recently came round to Franz Kafka. My correspondent was reading The Trial and that reminded me of Metamorphosis (1916). I studied it, in a perfunctory sort of way, as part of my undergraduate degree. And I once saw, and reviewed, a compelling and memorable staging of it by an innovative physical theatre company. Otherwise I hadn’t looked at it for a long time so it was overdue for a revisit.
It’s a long short story or novella which, famously opens with Gregor Samsa waking up one morning to discover that he has turned, overnight, into an insect: something repellent such as a cockroach. His family are appalled, mostly because Gregor – a very successful salesman – has been keeping his idle parents and sister in comfort. If he can’t work they will have to fend for themselves and that is their overriding concern although Grete, his sister tries to be kind at the beginning.
Well, my first 2026,, septuagenarian question was: Are we actually supposed to take this strange, surreal story literally? Although it’s written in the third person it’s almost entirely presented from Gregor’s point of view. Is it actually a depiction of severe mental breakdown? Kafka died aged 41 (in 1924) after a tortured life of mental health issues, depression and ultimately tuberculosis. He understood despair and had a troubled relationship with his own father, a wealthy Jewish Czech merchant, who had no time for literary aspirations.
So perhaps Gregor is simply (nothing simple about it, though) overcome by a profound sense of worthlessness which convinces him that he might as well be an insect – so he effectively becomes one? When the family finds him, for example, crawling around the floor and hiding under the sofa, eating mouldy scraps and getting thinner are they actually seeing their sick, deluded son in his own body but with his active mind very much elsewhere? After all they never, for a moment doubt that it’s him. They are revolted and ashamed but they don’t stamp on him. Gregor meanwhile is unable to speak (another symptom of profound illness?) but can hear and understand everything which is said around him. As a reading, it works but it’s far from flawless.
On the other hand perhaps we should take it at face value and accept that Gregor really is an insect. The details about his tiny legs and shiny carapace are convincing. It’s an existential, absurdist story after all. Clearly it’s about exploitation and alienation. And it was published in the second year of a massive European war the same year as Paul Hindemith premiered his cello concerto and Matisse painted The Piano Lesson. The world was suddenly a long way from Charles Dickens, Brahms and the Pre-Raphaelites. Moreover insects are often (usually?) in colonies like armies. Gregor is entirely alone and ever more isolated as the story progresses and perhaps that is relevant too. His predicament severs the connection between him and his tribe. And wars are all about tribalism.
Finally – I’m not going to worry about spoilers in this instance – Gregor dies. Like all insects he has only a short life. Anyway his body is damaged and he hasn’t had enough of the right sort of food. The char woman, employed now they can no longer afford maids and cooks, casually disposes of his body and tells the family she has got rid of “that thing”. At that point it’s definitely a dead cockroach the reader envisages. But it could, at a stretch, be Gregor forseeing his own death and imagining the family showing no interest in conventional arrangements because he believes he is worth nothing to himself or them.
Kafka was from Prague, then Austria/Hungary, now in the Czech Republic but he wrote in German. I have never studied German so obviously I have only ever read Metamorphosis in translation. I gather that there is humour – irony even – in the original language which disappears in translation. That too probably affects interpretation.
The most interesting thing of all, maybe, is that critics are still thinking and arguing about all this 110 years after Metamorphosis was published. I reckon, poor, disturbed, unhappy Kafka might even have managed a smile.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves:
