Should you, as a student or worker, wake up one day and find yourself to be a giant insect, what would your first reaction be? And how would others react towards your condition? Shock might be the very first reaction, both from you and your family; followed by an intrigue as to what has happened and why, ultimately leading to the sensible action: its cure.
But that is not at all how the protagonist of this novella, Gregor Samsa, or his family, react to whom this very absurd condition happens. Being a traveler salesman, Samsa is from a small working-class family, who are also under a financial debt. It is made very clear early on that Samsa is a hard-working man, because both the family’s income and their hope of paying off the debt depends on him. And so, the morning he finds himself to be a giant insect, his first reaction isn’t shock, dread, or intrigue – it is an anxiety about being late for his train to work.
We read how Samsa, ignoring his absurd situation, keeps worrying about having missed the first train, and judging by his metamorphosis, fears that he will miss the coming trains as well. His family, which includes his retired father, housewife mother, and a younger sister, show concern for his being uncharacteristically late that morning; yet upon finding out about his condition, they show no shock, but only disgust and worry about their worsening financial situation as a result.
The novella becomes even more alienating once a chief officer from Samsa’s office comes to take notice of his being so late. His reaction is similarly cold and indifferent to Samsa’s unfortunate state, and he’s only disappointed in realizing that Samsa is no more capable of being a salesman.
What Kafka has done here is to have presented a scenario so radical of the modern man’s predicament that it is both absurdly funny and yet simultaneously pitiful. No man can just turn into an insect, which gives the novella its humorous outlook, yet as soon as one takes a peek inside the story, the atmosphere therein is quite bleak.
Samsa himself worries only about his work, and later on, feels guilty for not being a contributing or human part of his family anymore. His family, especially the women, tries to have some sympathy and concern for the poor Samsa, but soon enough, their inability to know what an insect needs and their irresistible disgust towards him, forces them to discard him as only an insect.
Moreover, while Samsa’s becoming an insect seems to have grave consequences for the family early on, since he was their breadwinner, as the novel ends, the Gregor family, due to some of the decisions they had to take as a result of the incident, instead find their days turning for the better. Samsa becomes an unfortunate, dead, and awful dream of the past for them, as they look forward to their brighter days ahead.
Kafka’s intense form of self-pity and self-hatred, as well as the concepts of alienation from one’s people and general absurdity of life, makes this story a stark, bleak, and horrifying portrait of the working-class. Despite its absurdity and therefore its humor, Kafka’s, and literature’s overall, this impressionable and unforgettable novella reaches to the grotesque corners of the modern and capitalist society.
And it shall, as good art does, continue to comfort the troubled, and trouble the comforted.
Ratings: 4/5 ***** January 18, 2022_