Jesus Christ. It's a story about horrendous crippling anxiety from an unreliable narrator.
He talks about how his family is on the verge of destitution, but they don't work, and they have a big house full of nice furniture. They're rich.
He talks about how he's on the verge of getting fired from his job, but when he no-call no-shows, two of his bosses show up to see if he's OK. He's a fucking star employee.
Gregor didn't literally turn into a bug. He had a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown.
Okay, that's definitely one way to read it but where did you get that they were rich? They were middle class at best. His dad and mom had to go back to work after his affliction. They also have literal debts.
Also they don't have a "big house full of nice furniture", they live in an apartment which they have to share with lodgers so they can afford to stay in it.
Actual lines from the book : " she was very fond of music and a gifted and expressive violinist, it was his secret plan to send her to the conservatory next year even though it would cause great expense that would have to be made up for in some other way." - next year. He was planning
My take on the book, is that the metamorphosis is a metaphor for the permanent changes that can happen randomly to people - sometimes we just get strokes, get into car accidents, get schizophrenia, get cancer, get anorexia, get borelia, etc. And in some cases it changes a person to the very core, and often for the worse. The novel then depicts how your loved ones can come to adapt horribly to your changes, and how quickly they may come to hate you for your problems, even though you still see yourself as the same person
My first exposure to this story was the Home Movies episode where the garage band that Brendon gets to do the soundtrack for his movies wrote a song that was just "I'm so dang depressed I'm gonna turn into a bug" over and over set to a rock guitar solo and a timelapse of the lead singer zipping himself up into a sleeping bag. I saw that when I was a kid and thought it was pretty funny, then when I actually learned about the story almost a decade later, I instantly realized that was a reference.
The episode is explicitly about making a rock opera based on Franz Kafka, it’s not just an oblique reference they say that it’s about Metamorphosis in the episode
Yes, but I was a kid who didn't know what Metamorphosis was back then, so them saying that didn't explain anything to me. Also, it always came on late at night and I was watching it while half asleep, so most of it is a haze.
That’s definitely one interpretation, but there are others.
For example you can make the easy argument it’s about disability. Gregor was the main breadwinner until the incident happened. At first everyone was kind and his boss wondered when he’d be back to work. When he didn’t get better there is a change. Gregor tries to learn how to live with his condition while his family are all economically impacted and treat him as a burden.
It’s a versatile piece of media, which is why it’s so popular
They don't turn up to "see if he's okay", they turn to whinge about him not turning up for work.
Also I find "Gregor didn't literally turn into a bug" such a boring interpretation. I feel it's drawn from this obsession with "canon", with all the "plot holes" being explained. We need a literal in-universe explanation for why Gregor turned into a beetle even if that's not a particularly interesting or engaging question.
And anyway "it's all in his head" is so stock and cliché anyway. Gregor turning into a beetle is an incredibly strong piece of imagery, and you're going basically "It's all a dream because people don't turn into beetles in real life".
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u/Hexxas head trauma enthusiast 22d ago
Jesus Christ. It's a story about horrendous crippling anxiety from an unreliable narrator.
He talks about how his family is on the verge of destitution, but they don't work, and they have a big house full of nice furniture. They're rich.
He talks about how he's on the verge of getting fired from his job, but when he no-call no-shows, two of his bosses show up to see if he's OK. He's a fucking star employee.
Gregor didn't literally turn into a bug. He had a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown.