Hello, again!  This week, I am going to be discussing The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.  I read this book during my senior year of high school for AP English Literature and Composition (referred to as “AP Lit” for short).  For anyone who never took the course, AP Lit essentially entailed reading classical and contemporary novels and precisely analyzing their literary merit through essays.  

 

Prior to starting the novel, I was supposed to read an article on background information about the author, which I understood afterwards had the purpose of permitting the students to observe how Kafka’s personal experiences inspired the foundation of the novel.  Gregor Samsa, the protagonist, mirrors Kafka through the strained relationship he shares with his overbearing father and  the overwhelming pressure of having to provide for the family.  

 

To begin discussing more details about the workings of the novel, allow me to lay out the bizarreness of the book’s context.  This is perhaps best demonstrated through the first sentence of the novel:

 

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed to a monstrous vermin.”

 

When we discussed the novel in a class seminar after reading the first chapter, my classmates and I were all dumbfounded by the content of the story.  Given how we were so used to realistic novels, we found it difficult to wrap our minds around the wild context of Gregor Samsa’s situation.  He refused to go to work, never left his room, and tried his hardest to avoid communication with his family.

 

Nevertheless, just as we finally felt that we could make sense of Gregor’s situation, the ending of the novel provided another shocker (spoiler alert!!).  The family abandons Gregor and leaves him to die of starvation, while the maid must to tend to his remainings.  Many of us were confused by this, but we learned in class that this serves to highlight how Gregor’s family finally learns to stop selfishly relying on Gregor to support the family and to take care of themselves on their own.

Anyhow, on the surface, this book appears to tell the story about a man who turned into a giant insect and kept himself in his room to avoid contact with anyone else, especially his family.

 

However, the novel goes deeper than a man simply turning into a bug.  As my class continued reading, we became more comfortable with the context and understood that the novel serves as an allegory for human isolation.  The protagonist endures emotional hardships due to never feeling adequate, particularly because of the oppressive expectations of his father.  Gregor becomes dehumanized as an insect, which is exemplified through how he is unable to communicate to his family through anything other than garbled noises and symbolizes how they never understand him because they never make an effort to do so.

 

As I mentioned before, the AP Lit curriculum at my school required that we read this book, so its literary merit served to strengthen the analysis skills of the students.  Because the book was so bizarre, we were forced to try harder to comprehend the symbolism in the novel.  Thus, the educational goals proved to be successful, as the content of the novel was highly thought-provoking.

 

Overall, I found The Metamorphosis to be the most peculiar novel I ever read.  Reading the main character’s experiences as a bug was completely bizarre, but at least it grasped my attention.  The novel was not difficult into due to the surprises that only Franz Kafka could illustrate, and the style of writing was easy to understand.  In my opinion, the book deserves a 7/10.  I am not an avid reader, but I would definitely consider reading the book again.