“The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka
Gregor Samsa is a conformist man. He works tirelessly, never take a day off sick, and live his life like a clockwork down to the seconds. He is also the bread winner of his family, that consist of a retired father, a house wife mother, and a teenager little sister (Grete), a family that have grown to take him for granted.
But then one strange day he wakes up in a horror, when realizing that he has been transformed into a monstrous vermin. And that’s when everything is starting to fall apart.
This short story shows the nature of Gregor as a responsible but submissive man, where the first thing in his mind after the transformation is how he would still go to the office, his fear over how his ungrateful employer can easily replace him, and how the family can possibly survive now with him unable to work and eventually lost his job.
It also shows the characters of the other family members and how they react to the disaster, with the father projecting anger, the mother helplessness, and the sister showing compassion and care at first but later when she got overwhelmed she turned into the one who wanted to get rid of him. And true to his submissive nature, even in great pain Gregor still complies with the family’s unspoken wish for him to disappear, and he starved himself to death.
So many interpretations and philosophy can be extracted from this story, since it is very much relatable to the real world. It is a great example of how an ordinary family responds to a disaster, where following Gregor’s transformation the family suddenly need to generate other means to get an income. Something that, as it turns out, can be arranged after all without placing the burden of the family solely on Gregor’s shoulders, now with his father going back to work and they can rent out a room in the house for guests.
Of course, over the decades there have been numerous interpretations and lessons coming out of it, which is a testament to Kafka’s brilliance. Some observers argued that “the metamorphosis” is more of a Grete’s story rather than of Gregor’s, where throughout this ordeal the little sister is indeed transformed from a little girl into a young woman that takes over care and responsibilities.
Moreover, some see Gregor’s transformation into a monstrous vermin to be more of a metaphor of his deprived existence, with his presence in the world is reduced to merely becoming a corporate robot in his professional life and a money-making machine for his family. Meanwhile, other observers suspect that Gregor’s transformation is nothing more than a case of leprosy, which would fit into the narrative of the story and the people’s reactions towards Gregor, especially the 3 guests at the house.
Whatever the real intention behind the story is, it will forever be a mystery and remains open for interpretation because Kafka never revealed it. The book was also never meant to be published.
And true to Kafka’s style of writing, the story does not really have a conclusive ending, and instead it just ends with a bitter after taste where the family can easily move on without Gregor after they’ve figured out how to live life without his money and now without the burden of a vermin living in their house. Now that’s Kafkaesque.
THE CHAOS THEORY 