Metamorphosis by Franz KafkaII

Outside his room, Gregor Samsa’s family waits anxiously for him. Gregor is getting late for the office and the chief clerk has arrived to inquire into the delay in reporting for work. In fact, Gregor wakes up from a dream to find himself transformed into a gigantic dung beetle. He is taking time to adjust to this sudden change. He does not know how long he will remain in his present strange state, but he is sure that he does not want to offend his boss. 

As the chief clerk chastises him, Gregor tries to shout out an explanation. He manages only a squeak that makes everybody outside quite suspicious. As the change is only physical, Gregor still thinks like humans. His ability to act like humans, however, is severely compromised. Actually, Gregor finds it difficult to unbolt the door as the transformed physique makes the simple manoeuver of opening the door a staggering task for him. He is so anxious to salvage his loyalty to his firm that forgetful of his sudden and surreal transformation, he manages to come out and scare everybody present in the house. 

Gregor is a commercial traveller and his one aim in life is to provide for his family and to send his sister to an arts academy is his only wish. The irreversibility of change dawns on him slowly. His earlier social and professional concerns start appearing ridiculous as the human readers also understand the utter absurdity of human thoughts in a dung beetle.

Gregor comes to term with his new life as a lower animal- his appetite, his wishes and his idea of threats change: losing a job is not more crushing than his father’s stomping foot. The routine life of his family is disrupted and they have to adapt to a changed financial condition. They also have to struggle with keeping this strange happening a secret. 

Initially, Gregor’s sister with her youthful enthusiasm readily serves the dung beetle but as the novelty wanes, she loses interest and finds Gregor to be a hindrance to a more fulfilling life. However, only after his metamorphosis into a dung beetle does this traveling salesman find some leisure and attention. He also discovers a latent passion for music that was suppressed in his human life but surges forth in his insect spirits.

Forgetting public shame and caring nothing for the family embarrassment, he makes an unabashed social appearance as his sister plays the violin in the living room. But this soulful enjoyment of life, even as an insect, is brief as society abhors the repulsive creature and the family gears up to discard this unbearable burden. In fact he is prompted to a suicide and voluntary renunciation of life by his sister. 

The charwoman entrusted with cleaning the secret room soon discovers the lifeless body of the giant dung beetle. She pokes it with her broom and disposes it off, ridding the family of the ignominy, forever. The family rediscovers the lost rhythm of their life. 

Humans have an anthropocentric outlook, that is, we think that man is the centre of universe. Things and events are perceived from an intellectual and social point of view shared by humans. Metamorphosis, however, is a story is written from an alternative perspective. The story is radical as it revolves around the thoughts and perceptions of a disadvantaged creature, a human turned into a dung beetle and the author invites the reader to empathize with this insect. It is special also in its expression of the subjectivity representative of what may be called a ‘subaltern’ and hounded community in the War period.

Metamorphosis by Franz KafkaI

A review of an acclaimed story by Franz Kafka (1883-1924) - a Czech Jew author writing in the times when Nazism was an emergent movement.

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka:

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech Jew writing in German. He wrote his stories and novels in the period around the First World War and his writing reflects an acute apprehension of his position as a person belonging to a minority community and a persecuted race in the menacing socio-political situation prevalent in those times. S Grant Duff in Europe and the Czechs (1938) informs us that in the nineteenth century the Czechs ‘were fighting on two fronts- against the Austrian imperial system and against the Germans. Delving further into the history of Nazism Duff draws attention to the fact that the ‘excesses and racial hatred of Nazism is native to Bohemia, as is the movement itself. Long before Adolf Hitler and his friends collected in the beer hall in Munich after the war, Nazism had become a flourishing concern among the Sudeten Germans’ (38). The movement was directed both against the Czechs and Jews and in this way Kafka must have been doubly disadvantaged.

In Kafka’s story The Metamorphosis the protagonist Gregor Samsa eventually gives in after a prolong struggle with his subhuman existence. The story acquires surreal dimensions as the boundaries between dream and reality are disturbed and awakening of Gregor Samsa from his sleep is followed by a situation that has nightmarish elements rather than the consolation of routine. The 'matter- of- fact' tone of Kafka’s narrative jangles with the incomprehensible happenings that occur in the story. Kafka was noted for making use of realism to articulate absurd situations.

Eugene Ionesco, a renowned playwright and doyen of the Theatre of Absurd says, ‘Everything, as I see it, is an aberration’. He articulates his disenchantment with the world in these words: ‘I have tried to deal… with emptiness, with frustration, with this world, at once fleeting and crushing. The characters I have used are not fully conscious of their spiritual rootlessness, but they feel it instinctively and emotionally’. There are perceptible affinities in the writings of Kafka. Kafka, in fact, was a pre-cursor to the Absurd writers like Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. These writers convey through their writings a tangible sense of ‘rootlessness’ and ‘meaninglessness’ of the modern existence. But Kafka must have had the racial context in perspective that allowed a quantum of meaningful protest against crushing forces. It was strange and morbid experience though not utterly lacking in significance though it reached a point of absurdity.

It seems that Gregor’s physical transformation into a repulsive insect renders form to his undermined subjectivity or using a critical phrase offers an ‘objective corelative’ to his position in the social pyramid. Duff claims that the Czechs were then ‘invading the German districts in response to the demand for labour’(38). He asserts that the ‘German bourgeois treated the Czechs as underlings’ and the German workers ‘found racial grounds for their antagonism,’ and put up their notices saying: Jews, Czechs and Dogs not admitted (38). Gruff further informs the reader that they were ‘organized at first in the German workers’ Party which was formed in 1908, and in 1917 they even took the name which Hitler afterwards borrowed for his party-The German National socialist Workers’ Party’(38). Activities and groups of this kind must have evoked a fear of the fast emerging totalitarian state and an apprehension of oneself as a threatened individual. In other words, Gregor’s perception is so acute that he is literally transformed into a dungbeetle perhaps as a result of being treated like one. There is a correspondence between the historical author’s identity and the chief character portrayed in the The Metamorphosis. Certainly, there is a cue to this effect but no overt statement is made in this way.