Metamorphoses

This week, I had the opportunity to read metamorphoses by Franz Kafka. It's a short novel that follows George Samsa, an ordinary traveling salesman who extraordinarily wakes up as a cockroach one day. The change is completely external, and the metamorphoses doesn’t change the way Samsa thinks. The book details his day-to-day in painstaking detail, we learn about how his transformation, or metamorphoses affects his career, relationships, and life in general. 

 Gregor lives a mundane life up until he transforms into a cockroach, but even then rather than panicking, he ponders about trivialities like being late for work or how his boss and family will react to him waking up later. I thought this was an interesting take on capitalist society and how working and money-orientated society is (this could just be me overanalyzing). Samsa constantly downplays the absurdity of the situation to the extent where the reader becomes almost entirely desensitized to the fact that he is a cockroach. 

Initial to his metamorphoses, Gregor is the sole breadwinner for his family. After however, his family has to contribute and we see their attitude towards Gregor (the cockroach) slowly change and any familial attachment disappear. In the start, his mother and sister have some sympathy for him and try to make the best of the situation and make him as comfortable as possible. Towards the end, as the family's frustrations set in, their views change. He is described as a burden, something expendable. This makes the entire relationship seem transactional, as his family only seems to value Gregor when he contributes to their benefit and discards him when he doesn't.

After doing some further research, I learned that the book was a commentary on Kafka's life, who had a strained relationship with his father and felt as if he was a burden to his family. The metaphorical cockroach. Kafka like Samsa feels as if he is locked up in his room, unable to escape. 

I didn't enjoy this book much. I think it had a dull, pessimistic view throughout and left me feeling dejected and exhausted after finishing the book. However, it was extremely well thought out, and a beautiful metaphor for the futility and absurdity of life. 

I think I'll have to re-read this in a few years to fully internalize it.