Things are different, the protagonist can no longer support the family, expenses have to be cut. An allegory of a person's confrontation with a modern world that oppresses and erases him, the Czech author's novel continues to resonate today.
[”The Metamorphosis” can be downloaded for free from Bajalibros by clicking here.]
The traveling salesman Gregory samsa He tries to get up to go to work like every morning, but he can't. He is lying on his back and cannot get out of bed. He thinks that he slept badly, that he had a restless dream. It was not that. Little by little he discovers that he has many legs, a bulging abdomen, a shell instead of a back. It's a giant insect.
That is the initial premise of Metamorphosis (in German, Die Verwandlung, which also has as a possible translation “the transformation”. It is a long story, or short novel, that Franz Kafka wrote in 1912. That year the Balkan War, prelude to the World War I, which broke out in 1914. “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning after a restless dream, he found himself transformed into a monstrous insect on his bed.”. That is the famous beginning, which knows the planet, although he has not read the work, which was first published in October 1915 in the magazine Die WeißenBlätte.
Two months later, in December, it came out as a book in a 70-page volume, within the series Der jüngste Tag (“Judgment Day”), edited by Kurt Wolff. Kafka I had then 32 years and worked in criminal courts, where he advocated for benefits for people who suffered workplace accidents. Her family consisted of her father, mother and sister. Metamorphosis It is the only thing the author published during his life. He wanted to keep the rest of the work, and asked to burn it after his death, which would be less than 10 years later, in June 1924.
It is more than a century old Metamorphosis, a century and two decades since Kafka wrote it. However, it remains not only a perfect literary classic, but also a work that dialogues with reality. Before, like now. During the First World War it also happened, in 1917, the Russian Revolution. The Austro-Hungarian Empire disappeared, so Czechoslovakia became a Republic. At the heart of that matter was the young bohemian and jewish born in Prague, who wrote in German.
The restlessness and social, personal, national uncertainty, were a sign of the times. All of that resonates today. When everything is so extreme, tremendous, and you understand it without being able to understand it, the real and the absurd seem synonymous. Kafka He dived into that paradox and found a style that not only influenced modern literature, but also maintains an existential echo today.
While the United States became a great power, Europe began one of its most dark periods. The world, furthermore, was in the period of the Second Industrial Revolution. Scientific and technical progress also brought a growing bureaucracy. The unusual modernity became a patina of apparent civilization in tension with the threatening situations that existed in the environment.
The world around Kafka changed and economic growth changed its model. That happens to Gregorio Samsa, the literal reality of becoming a bug
Faced with the horror of seeing himself turned into a monstrous bug, what worries Gregorio first is how to justify yourself at work. The warehouse manager goes to look for him at his house, because it is unusual for him to be late. The protagonist makes his best effort, puts his fear before his work obligation and leaves his room. His father, mother and sister see his new cockroach form. They don't do much. They hear him speak with effort, a new, forced voice. He tries to excuse himself to his boss. His family offers no help. From the other side of the door come reproaches for his lack of performance, until the man spots the insect that responds to him and flees.
Conflicts with the father, a feeling of anxiety and distressing existentialism run through the work, plagued by guilt, cynicism and spiritual transformations. The world around Kafka changed its nature and Economic growth varied from model to model. That happens to Gregorio Samsa, from the most extreme absurdity, the literality of becoming a bug. It is possible to understand it, more than two decades into the 21st century.
The protagonist becomes an insect and at the same time, in this transformation process, his identity is gradually blurred. He changes his being along with his physical singularities. He is an insect and cannot support financially to his family, who now he rejects it. Gregorio understands, little by little, that he is not important, he realizes that he is a useless piece, a burden for his parents and his sister. Like now, many jobs and professions are becoming obsolete more and more quickly, along with the people who do them. Because they are old, because they are not very young, because a technology changed or another was invented. You have to adapt with forceps or be a bug that gets in the way.
The time of Kafka It was marked by social, political and economic conflicts. People, suddenly immersed in an unexpected modernity, they faced different changes. Different from the current ones, but just as significant. It is the advance of technologies on lives, a new current Industrial Revolution. Then and now dilemmas related to individualism arise in an increasingly dehumanized modern world.
Artificial intelligences that write, illustrate and even relate romantically. Metamorphosis, at first reading, speaks in a subtext of a topic that does not expire. Gregorio wakes up like incapacitated monster. It is an allegory of a person's confrontation with a modern world that oppresses and erases it. It is also a literary milestone, because that fantastic event that explodes the plot inaugurates the literature of the absurd and is the prequel to the dystopia.
Metamorphosis Suddenly it begins to make sense beyond the plot if you think about the character of the protagonist, who supports his sister and his parents, who expect performance, no matter what, even if the conditions are not met. Just like his employers. When Gregorio mutates into a bug incapable of anything, his family is also transformed, collaterally.
The layers of a distressing onion
Like a huge insect, Gregory samsa Communication is becoming more and more difficult. His father despises him. His mother faints. His sister, Grete, takes pity and takes care of feeding him. The bug spends most of its time in his room. The abandonment and disdain of his family grows little by little. They fear or repulse them. We must take care of it. Help him. They find him intolerable. The realistic and fantastic elements that he used Kafka They were interpreted in different ways. The most linear idea is autobiographical. The text has many more layers. Is a distressing and perfect onion that is peeling until now.
The Samsa family is looking for new ways to support themselves. They have to make adjustments, cut expenses. Does it resonate? It's still the plot of Metamorphosis. The father, mother and sister decide to rent one of the rooms in their house and this patchwork solution generates new conflicts. Any noise? Among other problems, Gregorio must be kept hidden and secret. He knows this, because the bug keeps the man inside. Still.
One night, Grete plays the violin for the tenants and her brother, who always loved music, tries to go listen. She is his last attempt at humanity. Everything goes wrong. The rent disintegrates and, with it, any attempt at apparent normality. Gregorio's situation is unsustainable. The family thinks so, and so does he. It is a mutual, silent pact, the protagonist decides to lock himself permanently in his room, without feeding, and his father, mother and sister do not return. It's a complete abandonment. Own and the environment.
To understand Metamorphosis You don't need anything more than to read the story. It is argumentative, engaging, intense, full of suspense. The historical context and the author's personal life give it more meaning. All interpretations are correct. There lies, beneath Samsa's transformation, the theme of identity and loneliness. And the message, apart from a certain similarity with the author's life, travels a road that begins in 1912 and reaches 2024: be different and not fit the pre-established mold Because society marginalizes you, it makes you a burden and the only way is loneliness and destruction.
En Metamorphosis, Kafka It shows the submission of individuals to authoritarian powers that disintegrate them. The Samsa family is the social environment and Gregorio, the adult of productive age. The story talks about the capitalist world, the consumer system. The author raises the importance of the protagonist in his family environment when he cannot respond to his obligations at work. Who is the monster in this story? That has no time frame. It speaks to both the beginning of the 20th century and the 21st century.
(nothing) curious facts
Not clear What does Gregorio Samsa become?. Could be cockroach, also beetle. In the text, Kafka He never describes exactly what it is like, nor does he name it. There is no literality, although it can also be read that way. In the first edition, the author quarreled with the editor because He refused to let a bug appear on the tapto. “The insect itself cannot be drawn,” he said. The illustrator finally made a man in a bathrobe, clutching his head in horror, in front of the door of an open room, from which only darkness emerges.
Another image impossible to illustrate is that of Kafka, beyond the literary myth for the poster. The image we have of the author is the reflection of his novels. A dark and tormented man, like his characters. However, his biographers emphasize that he was vital, joking, in love. He got along badly with his father, who was a successful and very authoritarian businessman with his only son. Her mother was a cultured woman and they had a sensitive, close bond. He was a good friend of his sister.
In 1912 he met Felice Bauer, a great love that developed more than anything by correspondence, because she lived in Berlin. In 1917 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She was coughing up blood. She decided not to get married. She continued writing. Novels, stories. Cards. She worked in her office until retiring due to illness, two years before she died, at 40.
Who was Samsa before the day the story begins? The protagonist's life is reduced to working, without worrying about himself. He is surrounded by people, but he is completely alone. He has no friends or personal relationships. His family and his boss had been treating him as if he were not human, without taking into account your needs. At least the minimum amount of rest. Everything makes him feel, literally, like an insect. It becomes that.
At the moment the transformation occurs, the sense of responsibility that Gregorio has towards his family also becomes guilt. The horror of it is not being able to comply. His death, instead of being a tragedy for his family, would be a relief. Everyone is transformed in some way, then. The modern subject has no choice but to go through his metamorphosis. It is a sharp point in the crisis of being. What about the family Samsa after the day the story ends? He tries to continue with her life. Like nothing. It's possible?
Metamorphosis It is a classic and every generation sees something there that resonates with its time. But there is an extra point, a sensitive key that removes it from that norm to make it as universal as it is particular. Kafka He found in that story the cyclical point of the crisis of the human condition. What happens to those who are different? What happens if the mandate is followed and that is why no one recognizes or understands you anymore? About us? How do they see us? Can we live like this?
Gregorio Samsa's metamorphosis It wasn't just the appearance that affected him. and built a shell for it. That's how it started, but that was taking what she thought, her feelings and her attitude towards life. The most famous Kafkaesque nightmare, Metamorphosis, speaks like never before, through the years and decades, a century or so later, with modernity.
Source: Infobae.com