To begin, I am NOT a bug person. I’m the girl who calls her dad into her room to kill a tiny bug. Hence, it’s understandable why I felt like this after finding out Kafka’s Metamorphosis was about a man-turned-cockroach, the grossest insect of all time:
Although I felt this way, I decided to give the reading a shot – the biggest influencer of this decision was the fact that I had no choice. The story begins very bluntly: Gregor wakes up one morning as a giant cockroach. Strange. The story continues with Gregor in a state of confusion for a mere split second, followed by a state of nonchalance, thinking about his job. Stranger. I am not one to judge, but if I was in Gregor’s situation, I would have probably reacted somewhere along these lines:
I found Gregor’s reaction to his transformation extremely odd. However, I started thinking about it on a deeper level. It seems as if Gregor felt so miserable in life that it didn’t even phase him when he became a cockroach. His first thought was about his job because that’s all he really lived for – providing for his family. In a way, this helped me make more sense of Gregor’s situation, and I didn’t really find it as odd, but rather sad.
As the story progresses and Gregor becomes more and more helpless I began to relate the concept to a real-life scenario. It’s a stretch, but Gregor began reminding me of my grandfather (evidently, not in the transforming into a cockroach way.) My grandfather used to be one of the most hands-on, hardworking people I knew. I would often even find him in my yard, planting or mowing. He would love fixing almost anything in sight that was fixable, and I remember his garage being filled with almost every tool one can imagine. Unfortunately, this all changed when he fell and broke his hip (not once, but twice.) For a while, he was confined to a wheelchair. While he wasn’t as confined as Gregor, who was locked in his room away from society and the rest of the world, I still imagine in his mind he felt the same way. For a man who was ALWAYS on the move, being stuck in a wheelchair would probably feel like torture. Today, my grandfather is doing much better. Being the hard-worker I know him to be, he strived to get back on his feet, and succeeded. Although he uses a walker these days, he often boasts to me about how much he’s improving and displays this by walking on his own when my grandmother isn’t looking.
Gregor’s story doesn’t have a happy ending like my grandfathers’ does. The fact that Metamorphosis ends in a manner like this infuriates me.
Gregor’s family – the reason he dedicated his life to a job he detested – unanimously agree that they’re tired of this nonsense and can’t bear to be bothered by his presence anymore. What if Gregor woke up one morning and thought this about his family? What if he decided he didn’t care about supporting them anymore, quit his job, and left to find happiness elsewhere? When the going gets tough, that’s the most crucial time for a family to stick together. This family did quite the opposite, with Gregor’s parents completely disregarding him. I found the ending to this story very upsetting and heartbreaking, because as a cockroach Gregor meant no harm to his loved ones.
When I first began reading Metamorphosis, I saw myself hating the disgusting cockroach. By the end, however, I sympathized with the poor guy, and deeply wished he would wake up one morning as a human again.
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This song is how I think Gregor probably felt after realizing how helpless he was, both mentally (not being able to communicate with anyone) and physically.
First of all, I love your choice of song for how Gregor was likely feeling for much of the story. If you read my mood diary, you will know that I feel that Gregor couldn’t even ask himself for help, as I believe he was too focused on the outside world to truly size up his predicament – perhaps he changed so much that he wasn’t even able to communicate with himself. I also like how your attitude towards Gregor (meta)morphed as you read. I think that any literary work that makes you think and change your opinion is a powerful one. Granted, I was focused mostly on how unfocused Gregor was on himself, but different works strike different people in different ways.
I too would have reacted way differently to transforming into an insect. Not only would I have freaked out much like your images show, but I would have attempted to help myself out of the situation. I agree with you that his family was completely unsupportive of him in his time of dire need. I wonder if the metamorphosis was him becoming the insect, or from the time he woke up to when he died, his family desiring him to be gone as the story moved along.
Your GIFs are awesome, as well as the comic strip summarizing the entire story. I wish I had found that first…
I love how you brought humor into such a depressing story. I always feel more depressed after I read The Metamorphosis and it seems like you sort of did too, but you looked at it from a funny, slightly sarcastic way and lightened the story for me. Like Jeremy I think your gifs and pictures are hilarious but even though they were whimsical you still talk about some serious themes in the book.
I am also that girl that calls someone else to kill bugs for me, so I totally empathize with you there. And then when you contrasted that with your sympathy for the insect Gregor I actually re-thought my feelings for him somewhat. I have never especially liked Gregor’s character and I have a hard time feeling sorry for him when he doesn’t seem to care about his own life. That part hasn’t changed, I still believe that people need to take control and make their own decisions and that Kafka wanted us to realize how most people do not do this. But you connected the story very personally to your own life and now I do feel bad for Gregor, even if I don’t agree with his choices.
So in short I liked the post, it was both funny and thought provoking and I love the Jason Segel gif.