Dear Diary,

Frankly, I really enjoyed the short story in its entirety. One of my few objections to the book, however, was his reaction to realizing he had became a bug. As the grogginess of sleep began to wear off my reaction would of went something like this:

This book was enjoyable for me, but not because it evoked positive emotions. Rather, it was the fact that the book was able to anger me that made me like it so. It made me angry because of the simplicity in which the family attempted to handle this catastrophic event. The sister was the most proactive, but it was clear to all of them that the bug was, in fact, Gregor and thus how can they not call a doctor or try something to fix this problem?!?! (On a side note, I feel this is why people misinterpret/depreciate art. They see the piece bringing out a negative emotion and automatically assume that means it is a poor piece of art, but truly that is a great art work. The job is to bring out feelings, whether it is positive, negative, or in between.)

There have been so many books, shows, and movies, that have played with the idea of a giant cockroach and because of this I continuously found myself wishing the author had included his depiction. Since there was no photo/drawing, I resorted back to the familiar, evil cartoon cockroach from the show Family Guy.

Cartoons had totally changed my perspective of cockroaches from simple bugs into evil super-villians. For this reason, I was constantly waiting for Gregor to change into a dark, mischievous creature.

Diving deeper, it is interesting to look at the contrast between the stereotypes of cockroaches and the cockroach Gregor became. A generally accepted idea is that nuclear bombs are one of, if not the strongest, power on earth, with enough power to obliterate the entire world 10 times over. With that being said, it is jokingly believed that even that could not deter the existence of these pesky cockroaches. In this story, however, the power of a family’s sorrow and disgust was enough to destroy Gregor the Cockroach. This gives a lot of credence to the strength the opinions of family’s had in that time, and still do today. The whole world can see you as a success, but if the members of your family think differently, it’s as if you have accomplished nothing. When I reached this realization I began to switch from the common and usually incorrect emotion of anger and realized it was commonality and sympathy that was coming out of me. I could relate to the feeling of dissatisfaction with ones self that Gregor felt based on the opinions of a few and the feeling that nothing you do will be enough to abate their hunger of expectations.

What made this book exceptional, in my opinion, was that it didn’t end with a happy revelation similar to what occured in me, through time and maturity, that their opinion cannot control how accomplished I felt about myself. Through Hollywood in today’s age that would of been the expected result, but instead it shows that sometimes that feeling of disappointment and the inability to achieve recognition from loved ones is enough to crush you, like it did with Gregor.

The first emotion that came into my head upon finishing the last page was a feeling of incompleteness. I couldn’t believe that he gave up, I wanted to ask

I had followed this character through his struggle, but he wasn’t able to overcome it. With further thought, I felt satisfied with the ending and almost happy with the glooming ending because of how real it was. In me, the book evoked the feeling which the character himself could never achieve, satisfaction, which really made me appreciate the skills of Franz Kafka.

Jake Greenberg