La da da da. This work, this Kafka, so many people imitated, tried to grip the inner us, the being of alienation, and I won't say they failed, no, many do just fine, but now that I have dipped into the Kafka experience, I can see how he is such a beacon to existential literature. "The Metamorphosis" is one of the most gripping, true stories I have read.
The Bantam Classics edition comes equipped with so much extra, especially in the ways of critical essays, you could take a small college course on "The Metamorphosis" in these 188 pages. I read one, but really, I just wanted to read the story. And now I want to give my reaction.
UNFRIEND: So, Gregor Samsa turns into vermin, a beetle...what did you think about his transformation?
ME: Well, I had a notion, through the little I've read of the story beforehand, that "The Metamorphosis" was about alienation. However, after reading through Kafka's background, it really hits you how his day job really detracted from his true passion, writing, and how his inner-self was at such odds with everything around him, his perception of what it means to be alienated is astounding. Turning into the beetle, the true self, and being disgusting to all around you, even to your self, that's profound.
UNFRIEND: If that was his true self, though, why was he so disgusted?
ME: I suppose he was unprepared for truth of his situation. Of what lingered in him. I have long thought that if we were exposed to ourselves, we would be horrified. In one of my unfinished novels, a young man is nakedly exposed to visions, regular visions of horrible, routine things he did, and proclaimed in glee, only after having gotten used to all he'd done and his ability to change, "I AM awful!"
UNFRIEND: How do you think he adapted to his metamorphosis?
ME: Again, he was completely unprepared. As time went on he learned to function as a beetle, but his mind was still so preoccupied with his family suffering, for him not being able to provide any longer. Of course, that was untrue when he saw his mother, father, and sister start to earn, and in the end he discovers how obsolete his existence was in regards to their comfort. It really makes you question a person's relative importance in that way. It also brings into question the value of altruism -- are good deeds really just someone else's perception of doing something good, when in reality, it could be done by the actual person being helped, and in turn is the do-gooder nothing of the sort, just a guy or girl to get over on, to be pimped?
UNFRIEND: How did you _feel_ reading "The Metamorphosis"? Did it evoke a special emotional reaction within you?
ME: Yes, a feeling of sadness and of some bitter confirmation. The images of Gregor having to hide under a sheet when his mother and sister were around, ones that loved him and did their best for a good while to take care of him despite his transformation, those images will haunt me forever because there are so many times I want to crawl under the same sheet, my true feelings and thoughts end up there, I cannot show everyone what I am. When I show my dad my poetry, he says he feels dumb and doesn't get it. Neither does my mom. Nor my psychologist. Very few do. But we can talk about basketball. That's my relation to the vast majority of the world, perhaps the whole thing, it's a struggle to let out the true realizations of the mind in the face of a wholly non-understanding world. However, as he hears his sister playing violin, he is snapped into a transcendent state that music can bring, and he forms a plan to take back his family, but even with that he fails and the apple episode with his father ensues. Because even though he can feel the music's spirit, he cannot erase what he is. A dreamer, perhaps. An ugly, creepy, out-of-the-order dreamer.
UNFRIEND: Why do you think Gregor's family turned on him?
ME: They were working to restore order to the house, and in such an equation he is not part. They were, after all, going through no metamorphosis themselves. His metamorphosis inconvenienced them to an extent, but they adjusted to keep their planet in orbit and not challenge the unknown, and he could not be part of such an equation. There was bound to be a time either they changed or he had to go...when in reality the inevitability was to be...he had to go.
UNFRIEND: Do you buy his metamorphosis and death as liberation, as suggested by one of the critical essays in the Bantam Classics version of the story?
ME: I don't sense liberation within the transformation. It is hard for me to wrap my mind around his being liberated because as an insect he has a stronger reaction to his sister's violin playing, to music. But perhaps. Perhaps it opens his mind to the poetry of those strings, however, can that save him from being alienated from his family, especially his father who plays this particularly unforgiving role? That is a contentious point. If we assert that his role within the family was obsolete anyway, that his relationships to his family were, in the sense of his role in the family, superficial, then perhaps the music was the pinnacle of his be. But there was still love flowing from his mother and sister to him, at some point, that he could not properly reciprocate, and that was torture he never overcame to his death. His dying was, perhaps, the liberation unwittingly, playing his final role in the sick little dance of his household, allowing his family members to continue in their illusion of who they are, and allowing him to rest in peace.
UNFRIEND: All right, I'm out of questions, any parting thoughts on "The Metamorphosis"?
ME: I question whether Kafka intended all this psychological role play in "The Metamorphosis", or was he just feeling so damn separated from the ordinary way of things that this was how he described such a feeling. I don't think fiction can be merely autobiographical, fiction writers' minds roam n wander oh so much and are illuminated with new ideas in the most abstract inexplicable ways, but with that in mind, perhaps Gregor Samsa in his transformation, is the angst of being in a world that can't conceive of you as you are. That alone is bold, profound, and the way Kafka presents it is mesmerizing. I loved this story from the get-go, when I could conceive of Samsa as this feeling of great angst through alienation and lack of empathy, by a world that wants business as usual and cover-ups of the gut-truth, I fell in love with Kafka for the first time.
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