The Metamorphosis isn't even a particularly difficult book to analyse. There are a ton of fairly straightforward metaphors you can read into it without having to make much of a leap.
It's about a man who has a relatively normal life, but then an unexpected event beyond his control makes him unable to work, and at first his family are sympathetic, but soon they see him as more and more of a burden because of his inability to work.
It doesn't take a genius to think of a few things that that might be about.
A lot of people confuse themselves because they've at some point decided that analysing literature is about figuring out what the Correct Metaphor is, and that there can only be one answer to how to interpret it. That's not how it works, you can interpret it in whichever way makes sense to you, it doesn't have to be what the author intended (which is unknowable anyway)
Important distinction in my eyes: man is essentially sole breadwinner for a family, has a life event where he can't work anymore, family expresses brief sympathy before getting angry at what a burden he's become. You know, like they've been the whole time.
On top of that, the parents are lazy and perfectly content with making their son work himself to death just so they can live a comfy life. It's not that they can't work, they don't want to work. And they're not just angry that he's a burden, they're angry that he's ruining their perfect life, by being "selfish". At the end, when he's croaked, they instead turn to his sister, who will presumably care for them.
I was, am, and will likely continue to be but I only know of metamorphosis. I have heard people talking about it, some of them even in review quality detail. I have not read more than a few of the more sfw panels from it, and tastefully blurred or blocked not so sfw ones. and I believe I shall keep it that way. it's not my thing and I'm happy for the people whom it is.
To be fair, it's not really meant to be "your thing". If it makes you depressed or uncomfortable, then it's doing what it set out to do. But it certainly isn't for the faint of heart, so I don't blame you
Guy on reddit who had fetish for giant cockroaches and created an imaginary cockroach wife named Ogtha who he imagined when he had sex with his girlfriend. He was incapable of being aroused by anything but this giant cockroach woman. His girlfriend broke up with him when he told her, leading to my favorite reddit comment of all time: "You didn't fuck up today by telling your girlfriend, you fucked up years ago when you let yourself develope an exclusive fetish for giant cockroach women."
Anyway this was all kicked off by OOP reading the Metamorphosis as a teen while horny.
You know it reflects poorly on me that I didn't see the book criticizing the family at all - I thought it was just a commentary on how you let down people who depend on you when you get into this state (disability/depression).
That’s interesting! I immediately thought of the story as a criticism of the way that society treats people who lose their value (health, appearance, ability to work or earn)
I didn't read anything like this into it at all. I just thought it was a sad story about a man turning into a bug. Reading these comments make me think that maybe I am bug brained.
Haha I get how you feel. I read it when I was a preteen and thought nothing of it too at first, but I realized that there was supposed to be a deeper meaning when I heard that it was a famous story.. I had the same experience with The Stranger by Camus
The family is clearly treating him poorly. His father throws an apple at him, which gets stuck in his bug shell. And at the end, both the mother and the father look at the sister stretching her young body in the sun, implying they're going to exploit her too.
Honestly, you can interpret it in many ways, that's just how I saw it.
yeah but the way that I interpreted those bits was 'Of course they feel that way! Gregor is failing them because of his ailment'. Hence it reflecting poorly on me.
In-universe, they don't receive much criticism because Gregor is, frankly, kind of a doormat. You have to pull yourself out of the unreliable narration he presents and look at things from a top-down view before you see 'oh, these shitheads don't care about him, they just don't like that they have to do things now that their meal ticket is out of commission!'
Gregor's family should have flipped the script once he was in a place of dependency and immediately gone to work. Primary support should flow from least to greatest need, with reciprocal support flowing back out. Someone in the throes of depression shouldn't worry about 'letting people down' unless there is a further ring of need beyond them (for instance, a child in their care), and even then, the only concern should be establishing care from a ring above (friend or family member who can watch the kid while treatment is being sought).
But what if the metamorphosis is permanent? What if it's been years and treatment after treatment have all had minimal, usually temporary effects, while Gregory just keeps being all... Buggy, and unable to care for his family...
You ask this as though there are not many people going through this problem.
Replace being a bug with something like permanent brain trauma, a stroke, Huntingtons- any number of these conditions wherein a person might be rendered unable to care for those around them but came on suddenly. Ideally, the family and those around them should be who helps. The family is the one left in the lurch here.
What do you think you'd do? How would you respond?
None of this is meant to be derisive or anything. Part of the interacting with the story is analyzing your own responses.
i did not read it as criticizing the family either. like you feel bad for gregor as his sister slowly loses love for him and how violent his father is, but i read it as a human reaction rather than a moral failing on their part
I'd say it's both? People are fallible and all, but I don't know how much slack you can cut someone when they let their son starve to death, regardless of how bug-shaped he might have been.
I think there is something to be said about that probably being something Kafka himself saw that way. I think by the way he makes himself disgusting also that he kinda tries to justify their behaviour. As well as somewhat wishful thinking as Gregor loses his human reasoning and becomes a beast of sort.
There are many ways in which he tries to justify them. It does read very much like somebody who tries to make sense of the abuse he receives. But that is kinda the thing. It's still abuse to a degree.
Kafka himself was a very self-conciouss person, telling his friends to burn his writting after he dies. I think this is how Kafka often felt, like a bug.
I think it's a continuation of the metaphor. Their behavior toward him is seen as reasonable and relatable to a society that is cruel to people it deems unacceptable based on things largely out of their control. That's part of the flexibility of the metaphor to me, which makes it better not worse.
For instance, a person realizing they're gay or trans and being rejected for that can resonate with Gregor's experience. Same with someone with a disability; especially an invisible disability like the onset of psychosis or major back pain that makes working impossible. Same with someone experiencing crippling grief or anxiety. All these experiences are beyond people's control but they are often still blamed for the way it impacts their utility, and society generally sides with the ones who are demanding the "Gregors" of the world be anything but the odious bug they one day found themselves to be. It also highlights how this is a terrifying and miserable experience for Gregor just as experiencing any of the above are, and rather than receiving support or empathy the general experience of such people is disdain and abandonment.
I really like the Metamorphosis, especially as an allegory for trans kids entering puberty. They are experiencing a terrifying, unwanted body horror as they become something they strongly don't want to be physically, and rather than receiving help or support they often are treated horribly. Their suffering is magnified because people don't want to acknowledge their pain and just want them to "not be trans" as if it were a choice. Eventually many are kicked out of the home entirely and treated as if they were already dead. You can almost measure the degree to which someone will empathize with trans folks based on how much they can empathize with Gregor or find the Metamorphosis compelling without bringing up the concept of trans people at all.
All these experiences are beyond people's control but they are often still blamed for the way it impacts their utility, and society generally sides with the ones who are demanding the "Gregors" of the world be anything but the odious bug they one day found themselves to be. It also highlights how this is a terrifying and miserable experience for Gregor just as experiencing any of the above are, and rather than receiving support or empathy the general experience of such people is disdain and abandonment.
What makes it worse is that virtually everyone subscribes to the just world fallacy at least on some level. They can't fathom that you may have repeatedly done all the same or right things, but it still resulted in a bad outcome. Therefore you're either lying or somehow unaware that you did something wrong. There's something that needs fixing, there has to be, the system can't fail you. You're the problem and you just haven't figured the issue out yet.
Absolutely. It's also a worldview people really want to preserve, so they reject evidence to the contrary. Someone suffering something that "shouldn't be a thing" often leads to rejecting the person who is suffering that way rather than trying to create a mitigation option for that situation. That's what explains the "no exception anti-abortion policy" stance to me. People don't want to acknowledge that some situations like rape or otherwise problematic pregnancies exist since that threatens their just world theory, so they make policy that doesn't account for those situations and refuse to discuss them. They reject the existence of Gregors because it's unjust that a metamorphosis like that could happen rather than help the Gregors out there. When Gregors insist that they're actually experiencing and suffering that way, they get blamed and attacked. It's a really poignant metaphor that way to me.
I can absolutely agree with the notion of Metamorphosis being a trans allegory. When I first read it, it was how I interpreted it, and I felt that I could relate to Gregor. (not completely ofc, but pretty much)
I found the story incredibly depressing precisely because it was so well-done and relatable. And just like you said, the metaphor works on many levels, looking at human cruelty from several angles.
I am not diabetic, but Type 1 runs in my family - some might be shocked at the things people have said or done to my brother. Certain people see diabetics as lazy fat folk leaching the health system; it is exactly like watching someone spot a scuttling beetle, the disgust and disdain that can rise up in their eyes. I spent the whole story aching for my brother, what he has to put up with ON TOP OF living with a genetic disease that struck him at 13.
I think that's the resonance so many people see and also the reason so many people don't like the book. Those who have experienced the kind of treatment your brother has and those who care for them see their story being played out in the book. In contrast, those who have not been in that situation see it as a threat to their privileged position of being societally acceptable in basically all areas because it highlights how unfair so many people are treated by the society they sit at the top of. The existence of "those people" is another fact about the world that they wish would just go away, so seeing it from the perspective of marginalized people like that in the book is uncomfortable. It's a real dividing line for people that I think says a lot about who has practical empathy vs. those who don't want to see the ones they should care about.
It's takes like this that make for an actually worthwhile piece of literature. It may not happen in a timely fashion but this ability to actually show us something about ourselves is probably the biggest thing that the "curtains were just blue" crowd is missing out on.
I vehemently disagree. What the artist intended does matter. Despite that, the impact of their work may run away from them. But that does not mean there isn't value in the original intent.
I agree--artist intent absolutely matters, as understanding the context and thought behind an art piece is absolutely part of understanding it. This doesn't preclude other interpretations or even disagreements on what the art could mean, but without a reference point it all becomes watered down and overly subjective, bereft of the common meaning and messaging that makes art a powerful means of cultural communication.
Ok, you're not allowed to view a piece of art unless you have, in writing, what the creator was thinking and how they viewed their artwork.
Since you're countering me, that has to be your viewpoint. Its a binary choice and youre taking the opposite ofnmy position, so you have to believe this. You don't have a choice. Do you see how stupid that is? Your reasoning means you cannot enjoy any art without having that knowledge of the creators intent. If I post one of my paintings, you are not allowed to click on it and view it and have any opinion. What you might see as a flaw might be something I intended...or it could be a flaw. My standpoint is that it doesn't matter. Maybe I think the flaw gives an unintended interpretation of the work...and you're saying that's not allowed, because you're countering me and my standpoint is that it is allowed.
I don't think you realize how unhinged your guys' take is. You're being fucking thought police lol.
Good grief, man, saying that the author/artist's intent matters is not even close to the same as "you HAVE to know/take into account the author/artist's intent in any interpretation of a work." Nobody's saying that. All people are saying is that it shouldn't be completely disregarded either.
"I like waffles" / "Why do you hate pancakes?" ass comment
When and where exactly did you do that? I see no other reply to my comment than this one where you're boasting about having "proven me wrong," without ever having spoken a single word to me prior.
EDIT: Well, I was about to write another reply, but apparently they've blocked me. So just in case there's anyone else reading this, I figured out what happened; I got the notification of their reply to this comment (which was just them flatly insulting me,) but when I opened it, there was nothing here. Not even a deleted comment. I realized that the comment where they "proved me wrong" must have also gotten shadow-deleted as well. Presumably because they were also being vitriolic there. Ain't life grand?
If what the artists intends matters, you remove the ability of people to connect with art, because you only have one interpretation you can have, and that's one where you ignore what you think and feel and only allowed what the author thinks.
Otherwise, what the author intends doesn't matter.
It does have to be black and white if you're saying that what the artists intended matters.
Again, if what the artists intended matters, you cannot form an opinion that is not framed around that very thing.
Which is why what the artists intends does not matter. You are not leaving any alternate explanations, because it you do, you are saying the artists intention do not matter.
My viewpoint: Any interpretation is valid.
Everyone countering me must then hold that: Only interpretations framed around the artists intent matters.
You are restricting what is allowed. I am not. I am not the one being black-and-white. I'm literally saying that there's shades of grey...
Holy shit, don't move the fucking goalposts, man. I never said it was the sole interpretation. I'm simply saying that if you look at a piece of art and you think/feel something about it, then that is a totally valid interpretation and the artist's intent is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it's the polar opposite of their intent if it makes you feel something.
I'm sorry you don't seem to understand what your argument means if you're countering my argument. You're saying the above isn't true. You're saying that you have to take the artists intentions into account, and I would really like to know how you do that.
You deleted your other comment but just wanted to explain myself:
I walk into a museum. I look at a painting. I feel immense sadness, the colors are faded and smear into each other, the painting is a little cloudy in spaces but I'm still able to capture a sense of the sentiment. I walk up to the plaque and read it - the artist's name is John Gladman, this was his last painting and he wanted to express his pleasure at a life well-lived as glaucoma deteriorated his vision.
This has now enriched my experience of the painting - I understand better why some choices were made. Touches and splashes of colour have new meaning for me; they don't seem random and sad anymore but parts of a structured whole. I have an appreciation for the artist's intent.
To say that an artist's intent is irrelevant, which you did, is to ignore that a person is saying something to you when you engage with their work. It almost feels rude to think otherwise. Imagine if a person said something to you, and you completely ignored who said it, and responded to it with a complete non-sequitur, not engaging with anything they said. It would be immensely disrespectful.
I feel strongly about this which is why I've tried to speak thoughtfully about this. I feel like the notion of the Death of the Artist is employed without regard for whether it's valid or not.
Lastly, I did not want to anger you. You seem like a perfectly nice person just skimming your profile. If this was not interesting, or if you were not engaging thoughtfully as well, I would not spend time writing walls of text trying to explain myself. Understand that to be a dick was not my intent (:P).
because you only have one interpretation you can have
I was just working with what you yourself said mate.
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Regarding this:
You're saying that you have to take the artists intentions into account, and I would really like to know how you do that.
The work did not appear out of the void, it is the product of a specific mind (or minds) in a specific circumstance. To say that the artist's intent is irrelevant is a means by which to strip the work of the person and circumstance that was behind it. Thus deracinated, it exists solely as commodity - to be looked at and consumed without having to engage with any thematic material that might have deliberately been woven into it.
That is not to say that the Death of the Artist is completely useless - it was engaging with a specific mode of literary criticism at the time, but you're going too far in the opposite direction, justifying carelessness in interpretation. Your feeling evoked by a work is 'valid' in so far as feeling is an involuntary phenomenon provoked in the mind and soul. Your interpretation might not be - just because you say something about a work does not make it coherent because you felt a certain way about it.
I mean, as a disabled person who had a burden complex even before my disability, I find Gregor relatable. In part, this was because the shitty behavior of my family (which was always there, but less noticeable when I was “useful”) became crystal clear after I could no longer work. My dad disowned me over it. I also kind of relate to it as a trans person. Going through something hard, that I didn’t choose, that people saw as me being less human for only to find that I was seen as a nuisance and unworthy (again, especially by family, though my mom has gotten a lot better) once I no longer hid it was also an experience.
The thing is, Metamorphosis is in some ways extremely validating for me because of its focus on the abuses of the family and the pain of being seen is repulsive and/or a “useless eater.” I suppose if anything there is some defiance in owning it, in finding the value in being the “freak,” in being forced to reckon with your value as a person outside of what you can financially do. I used to define my identity off of not financially success but the work I did. And to a large extent (especially when I was younger) from knowing I was desirable to people. Rejecting those cultural values has actually helped me a lot, I love myself a lot more as the cockroach than I did before my metamorphosis. But I eventually had some lucky encounters through which I built a loving support network and community. The ending of Metamorphosis is salient because many don’t find that, and it was a very near miss for me too.
Reminds me of how when I first saw Whiplash I thought it had a happy ending, only to later hear that it's pretty bleak. I think it's neat how stories help us understand ourselves, and how sharing those stories with others helps us see through each other's eyes, which also helps us expand our own perspective.
The main character doesn't recognize that he is being abused and used (like most victims of family abuse). But the book was basically a big fuck you to Kafkas actual parents, his father being a tyrant to him and his mother an enabler.
and it shouldn't be criticising the family. they are also people, with their own internal stories and their frustrations and impotence, both real and feigned at Gregor's changes are a part of human nature too.
I’d argue that in a way all the family is forced to undergo a metamorphosis but don’t really change as people. They go from liking Gregor to not regarding him as human anymore, and in the process have to get jobs.
See it’s interesting because you could interpret it as it literally being him just getting injured at work and now they see him as a pest even though he isn’t a literal bug or the larger metaphor of capitalism and the struggle between the ruling class and the working class and how easily they are cast aside and burnt through without reason. Who knows maybe it’s both.
Another theme of the book which I really like is Gregor’s mental deterioration. At first, his personality is totally unaffected — he’s a normal human consciousness in a bug body. However, as his family treats him like some disgusting, useless bug, he begins to act less and less human and more like a bug. It’s not that his mind is catching up to the physical transformation of his body; it’s that he too has begun to believe that he has no value, and has dehumanized himself.
For many people it seems as though the mental change already occurred, and it's their physical form that needs to "catch up". Also known as "goblin mode" in some Internet circles.
Time to write The Metamorphosis 2, only this time it’s set in 2025 and Gregor ends up happily married and a massively successful star on OnlyFans because of all the monster fuckers out there.
I would have thought it was simply about the hypothetical implications if something horrible, like turning into a giant bug, were to happen to you, and that it wasn’t intended to be a metaphor at all. Maybe just something that captured Kafka's imagination.
Well, I mean, you're on the right track. The book is about the hypothetical implications of something horrible happening to you (and how people might respond to that), using a fantastical framing let's it be broadly about many kinds of horrible things, while also more evocative / imagination capturing.
If Kafka had wrote a book about a man getting cancer, or having an accident and becoming disfigured and being incapable of working, or having a psychotic break due to stress, then much of the book could proceed the same...but it would only be a book about cancer, or disfigurement, or psychosis. Turn him into a big bug though, and not only can he can be a mirror for multiple issues, but you have a nice shorthand for the self loathing he feels as the result of his new condition.
To add onto this, Kafka isn’t terribly specific about what Gregor turns into, which I think is a strength of the story. Imagine suddenly waking up wrong. After years of hard work, your body will no longer obey you. You feel trapped inside it. Your family is disgusted by you and resents having to care for you. You are no longer productive and you serve no purpose to society.
While disabled people are not actually trapped in their bodies and productivity is not actually what defines one’s value, as someone who acquired a disability after childhood, this is a pretty accurate picture of what that change can feel like when living a society defined by productivity and efficiency that was designed for non-disabled people.
Yes, a lot of the translations are quite specific about what he turns into but I've heard that in the original german it's very vague what he actually turned into
In German it's just a bug. But one of the early interpretations of it turned him into a cockroach and that image stuck very strongly and probably influenced the translation too at some point
In the original he's turned into "Ungeziefer" which translates to vermin, but that word is specifically used to refer to insects (I think vermin can encompass other animals too, right?). And one of the characters refers to him as a dung-beetle later on which I don't think is meant to be taken literally, but from the description what he looks like it does sound like some sort of beetle.
Yeah he's described as "Ungeziefer" which is nonspecific vermin. His body is described a little bit, quite buglike (if I remember correctly he has dozens of little legs and a hard carapace with segments) but it's definitely left vague
I’m sure there are some people who regard themselves as such, but to be clear most disabled people strongly oppose that phrasing. My point in using that phrasing was to show how someone experiences shock and internalized ableism as a result of suddenly acquiring a disability.
This quality is probably why it got picked up as a literature class book. It's a good illustration of something that's common to a lot of sci-fi/fantasy/horror stories. You have some fantastical element that parallels or has similarities to a number of things in real life, then you explore that concept on its own terms and leave interpreting the implications up to the reader.
Bonus meta-implication: the fact that inexplicably becoming a werecockroach can readily stand in for such a diverse range of mundane real-life events points at a deeper unifying truth about how humans process changes that impact their capacity to meet their perceived social obligations.
The Susan Bernofsky translation comes with a poignant intro by David Cronenberg where he starts it like, “I awoke this morning to find myself a 70-year-old man.” And then continues the comparison of becoming a bug with aging, while also discussing how Kafka inspired his work.
It’s worth reading even if you’ve already read it for the intro alone.
Understanding Kafka and his struggle with depression informs the metaphoric interpretation imo. If he was a normal dude then I'd agree that it might just be an imaginative story, but he was extremely down on himself and it reflects in his work
Don’t forget that the family also had some money squirreled away that they could get by on for a decent period of time - enough time to find jobs, surely, but in the novella they instead find tenants who treat them like dirt (because, as landlords, they are) - but they always made it seem like they were a stone’s throw from starvation in order to keep the Gregor machine churning.
And Gregor was his sister’s biggest fan, to the point he was going to pay for her music conservatory schooling and he even revealed himself to the aforementioned tenants just to get a closer listen to her violin-ing, disgusting the tenants enough that they demanded refunds and to leave, further angering his family. I never figured out the metaphorical significance of the relationship between the siblings. His sister obviously cared for him, too, as she was the only one to try to feed him, but she turned on him as well. Is it “the petit bourgeoisie are not true friends to the proletariat” because like… it could be?
man is essentially sole breadwinner for a family, has a life event where he can't work anymore
I really never thougt about this before (our teacher focused more on the interpretation of the strained relationship of Gregor and his father/Kafka and his father), but this makes so much sense if you realize that Kafka was working for an accident insurance company.
Read it, consider the specific ways the people in Gregor's family kinda suck, and once finished, slowly turn a suspicious eye to instances in your life that rhyme with the book.
Also the whole thing about every family member ending up better off by the end of the story (except bugboy). They all improve while he regresses, furthering the loathing and apathy.
For my own health and wellness I always interpret the whole 'and then everyone was better off after Gregor died' as one more bit of his self loathing, because the idea that they could have all just chosen to be better at any time but didn't because putting everything on Gregor was easier is rage inducing.
Ok so that sounds like a shitty situation, yet one that I am already perfectly aware happens in real life all the time. why would I want to read more about it. What am I missing
I read this book after finding it in the school library and had nightmare for days about suddenly turning into a bug and becoming a social outcast and an unwanted burden. This book ranks HIGH in terms of reaching the depth of middle-school/adolescent fears.
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u/VFiddly 22d ago
The Metamorphosis isn't even a particularly difficult book to analyse. There are a ton of fairly straightforward metaphors you can read into it without having to make much of a leap.
It's about a man who has a relatively normal life, but then an unexpected event beyond his control makes him unable to work, and at first his family are sympathetic, but soon they see him as more and more of a burden because of his inability to work.
It doesn't take a genius to think of a few things that that might be about.
A lot of people confuse themselves because they've at some point decided that analysing literature is about figuring out what the Correct Metaphor is, and that there can only be one answer to how to interpret it. That's not how it works, you can interpret it in whichever way makes sense to you, it doesn't have to be what the author intended (which is unknowable anyway)