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The Metamorphosis (in German, Die Verwandlung) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915, and arguably the most famous of his works along with the longer works The Trial and The Castle. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a giant "monstrous vermin" (see Lost in translation, below). It is widely regarded as a highly symbolic tale with various interpretations.

The storyline

The story is sometimes comic – for example, near the start, Gregor's main concern is that, despite what has happened, he must nevertheless get to work on time.

Gregor is unable to speak in his insect form, and never successfully communicates with his family at all after his physical appearance is revealed to them. However, he seems to retain his cognitive faculties, which is unknown to his family.

Curiously, his condition does not arouse a sense of surprise or incredulity in the eyes of his family, who merely despise it as an indication of impending burden. However, most of the story revolves around his interactions with his family, with whom he lives, and their shock, denial, and repulsion whenever he reveals his physical condition. Horrified by his appearance, they take to shutting Gregor into his room, but do try to care for him by providing him food and water. The sister takes charge of caring for Gregor, initially working hard to make him comfortable. Nevertheless, they seem to want as little to do with him as possible. The sister and mother shrink back whenever he reveals himself, and Gregor's father pelts him with apples when he emerges from his room one day. One of the apples becomes embedded in his back, causing an infection.

Time passes as, confined to his room, Gregor's only activities are looking out of his window, and crawling up the walls and over the ceiling. Financial hardship befalls the family, and the sister's caretaking deteriorates. Devoid of human contact, one day Gregor emerges to the sound of his sister's violin in the hopes to get his much-loved sister to join him in his room and play her violin for him. But her rejection of him is total, when she says to the family:

We must try to get rid of it. We've done everything humanly possible to take care of it and to put up with it, no one can blame us in the least.

The sister then determines with finality that the insect is no longer Gregor, since Gregor would have left them out of love and taken their burden away. Gregor returns to his room, lies down, and dies from starvation, neglect and infection caused by the festering apple his father threw at him months before.

The point of view shifts as, upon discovery of his corpse, the family feel an enormous burden has been lifted from them, and start planning for the future again. Fantastically, the family suddenly discovers that they aren't doing badly at all, both socially and financially, and the brief process of forgetting Gregor and shutting him from their lives is quickly accomplished.

Interpretation

As with all of Kafka's works, The Metamorphosis is open to a wide range of interpretations; in fact, Stanley Corngold's book, The Commentator's Despair, lists over 130 interpretations. Most obvious are themes relating to society's treatment of those who are different. Other themes include the loneliness of being cut off and the desperate and unrealistic hopes that such isolation brings.

Some also feel the book deals with the absurdity of human existence, leading some literary critics to associate it with existentialism or absurdism. It is also possible to apply Freudian and other forms of literary criticism to the novella.

Lost in translation

The opening line of the novella is famous in English:

As Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect.

However, this English translation of the opening line is spurious. The actual German line runs like this:

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

English translators have often sought to render the word Ungeziefer as "insect", but this is not accurate, and is based on a misguided attempt to clarify what Kafka intended (according to his journals and letters to the publisher of the text) to be an ambiguous term. In German, Ungeziefer literally means "vermin" and is sometimes used to mean "bug" – a very general term, totally unlike the scientific sounding "insect". Kafka had no intention of labelling Gregor as this or that specific thing, but merely wanted to convey disgust in his transformation. Literally, the end of the line should be translated as ...transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin (this is the phrasing used in the David Wyllie translation *), although the feeling of the word in German is more colloquial sounding (like "bug").

Amusingly, generations of English translators have gotten more and more carried away with this literal (and incorrect) version of Gregor's transformation, and have actually rendered Ungeziefer as "cockroach", "dung beetle", "beetle", and other highly specific terms. The only term in the book is "dung beetle", used by the cleaning lady near the end of the story, but it is not used in the narration. This has become such a common misconception, that English speakers will often summarize Metamorphosis as "...a story about a guy who turns into a cockroach". Despite all this, no such creature appears in the original text.

Vladimir Nabokov, who was an entomologist as well as writer and literary critic, insisted that Gregor was not a cockroach, but a beetle with wings under his shell, and capable of flight - if only he had known it.

Influence

  • Philip Glass composed incidental music for two separate theater productions of the story. These two themes, along with two themes from the Errol Morris film The Thin Blue Line, were incorporated into a five-part piece of music for solo piano entitled Metamorphosis.

  • A longer sequel, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa was written in 2002 by Marc Estrin.* In it, Gregor is revealed to have survived his apparent death at the end of the original story and goes on to have additional travels and experiences.

  • In Mel Brooks' 1968 movie The Producers, two men working on a fraud scheme are looking for the worst play they can find, and pass up The Metamorphosis (after having read the line about Gregor being a giant insect) as being "too good". This dialogue survives in the 2001 Broadway and 2005 movie adaptations.

  • In another Mel Brooks movie, Spaceballs, Dark Helmet passes a reference to Kafka when their spaceship is transforming into a gigantic maid.

  • The dialogue driven cartoon Home Movies did a tribute to "The Metamorphosis" in "Director's Cut", an episode in the first season of the show. The characters performed a rock opera style retelling of the short story.

  • In The Venture Bros. episode "Mid-Life Chrysalis", Dr. Venture's transformation into a caterpillar slightly mirrors that of Gregor Samsa's transformation. Quote: "Gentlemen, what you are about to see is a nightmare inexplicably torn from the pages of Kafka!"

  • Notorious American cartoonist Robert Crumb drew an illustrated adaptation of the novella.

  • In the comic book Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez, the epinomous Johnny is plagued by a roach that keeps appearing in his house no matter how many times he kills it (whether or not this roach is immortal or simply many different roaches is up to interpretation) and is affectionately named "Mr. Samsa".

  • In the Konami Playstation 2 game Shadowhearts 2, you face bug like creatures called "Gregor" as random battles in the sewer level.

  • In the popular comic Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes claims that if he does not receive a good night kiss, he will have Kafka dreams.

  • In the popular comic FoxTrot, Jason sleeps with the hopes of waking up as a beetle but instead wakes up as a younger clone of his sister.

  • In the television series Smallville, Chloe speculates that a character who seems to be transforming into an insect is "going Kafka".

  • In the play The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute, Adam says to Evelyn in the final scene "I got a little Gregor Samsa thing going on right now..." after Evelyn reveals his "metamorphosys" to his peers.

  • In Kurt Vonnegut's collection of short essays "A Man Without a Country," he mentions "The Metamorphosis" in a discussion of plot as an example of a book where the main character starts out in a bad situation and it only gets worse from there (to infinity, in fact).

  • In Rudy Rucker's novel White Light, the main character enters a world where he meets a giant talking roach-like creature named "Franx".

  • In Covenant an enemy in the form of a giant bug appears with the name "Gregor".

  • In one episode of the Nickelodeon cartoon series The Angry Beavers, the beavers fend off a giant beetle by donning heavy boots and brandishing large newspapers, much like Samsa's father.

  • Catalan writer Quim Monzo's rather twisted short story Gregor tells about a bug which turns into an human, in an attempt to ironically deconstruct The Metamorphosis.

External links

1915 novels | Existentialism | German stories | Shapeshifting in fiction | Franz Kafka

Proměna (povídka) | Die Verwandlung | La metamorfosis | Metamorfosia (liburua) | La Métamorphose | Preobrazba (Kafka) | La Metamorfosi | De gedaanteverwisseling | 変身 (小説) | A Metamorfose | Förvandlingen | 变形记 (卡夫卡)

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "The Metamorphosis".

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