And when he woke up he was a bug!

In his will, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) stated he wished all of his writings to be burned. After Kafka’s death from tuberculosis, his literary executor, Max Brod, ignored his friend’s wishes and had his novels and stories published. This presents a sort of ethical quandary for readers of Kafka’s work: on the one hand, we’re glad we can read the fiction, but on the other hand we have to feel a little uncomfortable knowing that the author didn’t want the fiction to be published and the only reason we’re reading it is that somebody violated the author’s last requests.

On the other hand, having his last wishes ignored is consistent with Kafka’s life. His father forced him to attend German schools in Prague (the family was Czech, not German) because the Germans were the elite of the city; when Kafka was older, he was forced to go to law school and work at an insurance firm, where he stayed until 1922, when complications from tuberculosis forced him to resign and seek treatment.

One critic’s evaluation of Kafka’s work is as follows:

“In his works, Kafka presents a grotesque vision of the world in which alienated, angst-ridden individuals vainly seek to transcend their condition or pursue some unattainable goal. His fiction derives its power from his use of precise, dispassionate prose and realistic detail to relate bizarre, often absurd events, and from his probing treatment of moral and spiritual problems.”

In the novel The Trial, for example, the hero is accused of a crime and required to defend himself in court, but he isn’t told what crime he’s supposedly committed. The novel describes his struggles with bureaucracy and the legal profession, trying to keep himself from being punished and fighting to learn what he’s being accused of.

Many readers are frustrated by The Metamorphosis because it doesn’t play out in the way we expect. We never find out, for example, why Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning as an enormous insect: we anticipate that when something this outrageous happens in a story, the author will provide us with some kind of explanation. Yet Kafka never even addresses the question. Furthermore, Gregor’s reaction to being transformed into an enormous insect is unusual, to say the least: instead of screaming hysterically or even becoming agitated, his reaction is to think about how stressful his job is:

“Oh, God,” he thought, “what a strenuous profession I’ve picked. Day in, day out on the road. It’s a lot more stressful than the work in the home office, and along with everything else I also have to put up with the agonies of traveling—worrying about making trains, having bad, irregular meals, meeting new people all the time but never forming any lasting friendships that mellow into anything intimate” (Norton 2000).

You probably haven’t spent much time speculating about how you would react if you were transformed into a giant insect . . . but you probably wouldn’t start thinking about how much you hated your job.

At the same time, however, Kafka presents the details of Gregor’s transformation in a very realistic way, making this situation seem vivid and at least somewhat believable:
“He lay on his hard, armorlike back, and when lifting his head slightly, he could view his brown vaulted belly partitioned by arching ridges, while on top of it, the blanket, about to slide off altogether, could barely hold. His many legs, wretchedly thin compared with his overall girth, danced helplessly before his eyes” (1999).

The two parts don’t really seem to go together—Kafka presents the physical transformation in a realistic way, but Gregor reacts to the transformation by trying to get up and go to work and reassuring his family that everything is all right.

A number of other elements in the story are strange but seem significant. Notice that Gregor seems to enjoy being a bug: when he falls onto his legs after several paragraphs of trying to walk upright, Kafka writes, “The instant this happened, he felt a physical ease and comfort for the first time that morning” (2008). Similarly, when his sister brings a variety of foods into his room to see which ones he likes, he’s drawn to the rancid foods and disgusted by the fresh foods (2011), and he develops the habit of walking on the walls and ceiling of his room: “He particularly liked hanging from the ceiling. It was quite different from lying on the floor: he could breathe more freely and a faint tingle quivered through his body” (2015).

His sister undertakes the project of moving the furniture out of his room so it will be easier for him to climb on the walls, but in the middle of that effort his mother objects, saying, “If we remove the furniture, isn’t that like showing him that we’ve given up all hope of his improvement and that we’re callously leaving him to his own devices?” (2016). Gregor, who had at first been pleased at the thought of having the furniture moved out, is moved by his mother’s words: “Did he really want the warm room, so cozily appointed with heirlooms, transformed into a lair, where he might, of course, be able to creep, unimpeded, in any direction, though forgetting his human past swiftly and totally? By now, he was already on the verge of forgetting, and had been brought up sharply only by the mother’s voice after not hearing it for a long time” (2016).

Ironically, when he rushes out to keep his mother and sister from carrying away his furniture, he frightens his mother and eventually ends up involving his father, who attacks him with apples, causing a lingering wound that may contribute to Gregor’s death.

It’s interesting, too, to note the transformation that takes place in the family’s attitude toward Gregor. Late in the story, the sister, who had been so supportive of Gregor when he first became an insect, tells the parents she thinks their problem is believing the insect is really Gregor: “Just how can that possibly be Gregor? If that were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that human beings can’t possibly live with such an animal and he would have left of his own accord. We might have no brother then, but we could go on living and honor his memory” (2027). And, after hearing her speech, Gregor retreats to his room and seems to will himself to die.

Not surprisingly, many critics have offered many interpretations of The Metamorphosis. One interpretation is that Gregor’s transformation works as a metaphor for the various ways a family member can go from being one of Us to being an Other. A person who falls in love with the wrong sort of person or undergoes a conversion to the wrong sort of religion can be viewed by his or her family as some kind of monster. In the past, students have said Gregor is being treated as someone who has come out of the closet as homosexual might be treated by his or her family. And a number of people like the explanation that Gregor’s transformation might be a metaphor for some kind of disease—Gregor is analogous to a patient with a long-term illness who experiences so much physical degeneration that it’s easy to see him as being less than human.

Since Kafka was a contemporary with Sigmund Freud, a number of interpretations involve Freudian concepts. One such interpretation relies on Freud’s idea of the Oedipal impulse, the theory that young boys have the impulse to kill their fathers and have sexual relations with their mothers (Yes, Freud is kind of icky.). According to this interpretation, Gregor has become the breadwinner of his family, taking his father’s traditional place. As a result of this symbolic murder of the father, Gregor experiences guilt and inner turmoil, which manifests itself as a transformation into a monstrous vermin.

Another Freudian interpretation relies on Freud’s structure of the self as ego, superego, and id. The id is the part of the self that is impulsive and unconcerned about consequences; the superego is the part of the self that is concerned about following ethical guidelines and traditions; the ego is the part of the self that attempts to mediate between the demands of the id and the superego. According to this interpretation, Gregor’s transformation is symbolic of the unleashing of his long-repressed id. He’s spent so much time trying to be the dutiful son, working at a job he hates in order to provide for his family, that he’s denied the existence of his personal impulses and desires, and they finally burst out of him, manifested in his transformation into an insect. (Some critics would say that he dies because he continues to listen to what his family wants from him rather than following his own desires)

Another interpretation would focus on connections with Kafka’s own life, taking into account his employment in a job he disliked, his relationship with his domineering father, and other issues from his life. This interpretation would point to remarks Kafka made while he was depressed about his writing ability, saying something to the effect that he was only worthy to be swept up with the household rubbish—which is what happens to Gregor at the end of the story. This reading would also look at Kafka’s reaction to his father’s characterization of one of Kafka’s actor friends as a flea-ridden dog and a vermin: Kafka took those remarks as applying to himself as well.

Finally, another approach to the story would be to see it as what’s known as “a literalization of a metaphor.” We’d all understand if somebody said that work or family life made him or her feel like an insect; this interpretation would see Kafka as taking that metaphor and making it literal: instead of just feeling like an insect, Gregor actually becomes an insect. This helps explain why Gregor barely reacts when he wakes up in the morning and finds himself an insect: people have been treating him that way for a long time, and all that’s happened now is that it’s visible from the outside.

For discussion:

- What portions of The Metamorphosis strike you as interesting, strange, mysterious, unusual? Which passages or details make you wonder what Kafka is up to?

- What interpretations of the story seem most believable to you?