Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Why it's Awesome. Part 2

It's hard not to empathize with Gregor. Before his transformation almost every one of his relationships was parasitical. The Samsas used Gregor to fill their needs with no regard to his interests or feelings and Gregor was only given attention and taken care of as long as he provided for them. Once transformed he is no longer capable of sustaining the family and he becomes an inconvenience. To his family, he was never fully seen as a human. He was alienated even before his monstrous transformation.

A thing that always stands is that when Gregor turns into the insect his family has no trouble in recognizing him as a bug. They never even question whether he is the insect. They never wonder if he was eaten by the creature or simply vanished. For Mr. and Mrs.Samsa his transformation, though shocking at first, seems to be understandable, and almost expected. The problem the Samsa family has with Gregor is not that he is an insect, it is that through his transformation they are also revealed as vermin. This is why they are so uncomfortable with him and hide him at all costs. They are forced to see how their own philandering makes them insect-like. In that way, they fear that Gregor might be contagious.

Gregor's only human connection is with his sister Grete. Her passages are some of the best in the book and they bring out a silver lining in the horror of Gregor's fate. Grete is the apple of his eye. He wants to send her to a music conservatorium, he sees hope in her. During the first stages of his transformation, she is the only one that takes care of him. Yet as time goes by she undergoes her own transmutation from child to adulthood. His sister's metamorphosis accompanies his own radical change. She too becomes a monster of sorts, as if she also awoke one morning to find she had turned into a semi-human creature.

Gregor’s monstrosity is that he is capable of reasoning but unable to express his intelligence, feeling and thinking as a human but trapped in a horrifying body. Grete’s monstrosity is that she expresses intelligence but full of selfish intent, and as her sympathy for the “vermin” dissolves her change is complete. It is the transformation from the beauty of childhood into the cynicism of the adult. Contrary to Gregor, her change is not in form but in spirit.

As a child, Grete was caring, understanding and candid. When she grows she loses this innocence and becomes selfish, a twisted version of her child state. Her change is so complete that she is the first to suggest disposing of the insect; she is the first to express that the bug is not Gregor and that her brother is truly gone. Her own metamorphosis resembles Gregor’s in that her inner-self is insect-like; uncaring, cold and unfeeling. The difference in their transformations is that while Gregor undergoes a physical mutation he remains just as taciturn and melancholic. On the other hand, Grete suffers a tragic internal transformation of her own.

In a lecture about The Metamorphosis, Vladimir Nabokov discusses the insect itself; playing with Kafka’s descriptions to classify Gregor within a specific species, Nabokov says: “Now what exactly is the "vermin" into which poor Gregor, the seedy commercial traveler, is so suddenly transformed? It obviously belongs to the branch of "jointed leggers" (Arthropoda), to which insects, and spiders, and centipedes, and crustaceans belong…”. Entomology aside, the difficulty found in assigning a scientific name to Gregor reveals an interesting point. Though Kafka rarely goes into detailed descriptions, there seems to be a deliberate absence of them when it comes to Gregor. Aside from the early lines describing him as brown, dome-like and with a hard shell, Kafka’s choice to leave information out encourages the reader to complete the image of Gregor with their own imagination. It is a means to bring in the reader to complete the vision and thus create an image of how they would see themselves if they would become an insectoid. Through this we are warned; we are shown that Gregor’s plight could very well be our own.

Wings! Gregor never realized he had wings. He could have flown out the window, but he never does so. Why? This points to an interesting notion. Gregor never considers flying away because eventhough his body has transformed his mind doesn't. For all his changes, Gregor maintains his self-awareness, a strong connection to his humanity that is sustained until his dying breath. Gregor thinks, has emotions; he is moved by music even more so than the humans.

Literature and cinema contain countless characters that suffer some sort of transfiguration. Dr.Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde, Seth Brundle comes a giant fly, Bruce Banner into the Hulk. Yet there is a vital difference between these characters and Gregor that make him unique. Dr. Jekyll drinks a potion, Seth Brundle experiments on himself, Bruce Banner loses his temper. They become abominations as a result of their own pursuits. Their own obsessions lead them to transform. This gives the story a straightforward moral. Don't tamper with the natural order and the fight between good and evil. Gregor, on the other hand finds himself in the situation, with no apparent warning and for no obvious reasons. In that lack of explanation we're allowed to imagine. Gregor’s transformation comes as a result of his own inner desires.

Perhaps Gregor does not suffer a transformation into a monstrosity; he only adapts into the physical manifestation of what he truly is. His work, his family’s pressure, his incapacity to relate to other people and himself, poses the question. Was he human to begin with? His previous life, filled with thoughtless action, from one business trip to the next, a life lived to earn money, to pay debts. It was in a sense the life of an insect, collecting pollen for the hive. The unexpected and surprising metamorphosis that Gregor undergoes serves as a warning, against a dreadful destiny in which anyone can find themselves. When compared to Dr.Jekyll’s transformation into Mr.Hide a greater fear hides behind Gregor’s metamorphosis: that one might wake up any given morning and find one has become a monster.