He travels the region selling carpet.
His bedroom has three doors, giving him direct access to most of his house.
He turned into a human-sized insect, and didn't flip out.
Some know him as the "Most Interesting Man in the World", and now as the "Most Interesting Insect in the World".
This man is Gregor Samsa.
In The Metamorphosis, Kafka gets straight to the point: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect" (Kafka 64). He does not freak out, he does not scream, but just realizes how much of an inonvenience this is. Going to work and getting to the train will be difficult, but dealing with the health insurance doctor if he was to miss work would be a pain too...plus his streak of work without days missed would come to an end. Isn't that a shame? If only he hadn't had the misfortune of being turned into a bug, was the way I interpreted Samsa's reaction.
To be honest, if I woke up one morning having been turned into a bug, work/school would be the absolute least of my concerns. I'd be trying to figure out what was going on, what caused it (Kafka has not elaborated on the nature of his condition so far, and I personally doubt that he'll explain it...if the expression Kafka-esque has any weight, he'll probably leave it up in the air to confuse people more), and how I could stop being a bug. Chances are I would think it's a dream, and that might just be the case here...after all, The Metamorphosis came out long before it became an annoying cliche to have everything end up happily ever after, following the main character waking up from some sort of strange, elaborate nighmare.
Anyways, as we learn pretty quickly, being a huge bug sucks. You have scratches in weird places, you can't curl up in a fetal position (does rolling over onto its back and flailing its legs have the same effect though?), and most importantly, interaction in human society would be next to impossible. Human instinct is to smash a bug when they see it...imagine what would happen if you came across a human-sized bug. Depending on who you came across, they'd either run away screaming or try to kill you on the spot. And especially with a job based so heavily in human interactions (travelling salesmens' jobs are based entirely in working with the public) it'd be pretty hard to sell your product if you either were being ran away from or being attacked...I guess we'll just have to see what happens.
I'm really liking The Metamorphosis so far. It opens immediately with an event which drew me in, and now I'm really interested to see what happens with poor Gregor and the misfortune he'll face as a giant bug.
Speaking of cliches: I might have closed the book after the opening of the Metamorphosis if a) it wasn't Kafka, who I know is good and b) it wasn't assigned. Weirdness for weirdness' sake is something I find incredibly annoying, but I like how Kafka has created a story that has more layers than just an exploration of this odd thought experiment.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the opening line of this book, although it seems to be silly it certainly grabbed me as a reader. There are a lot of strange things about this book that don't quite add up, first and foremost the fact that Gregor has turned into a bug overnight. His nonchalant attitude about his transformation (and all the other strange things in his world) to me simply adds to the weirdness of this novel. This may perhaps support the strange argument that Jonah made in our fourth period that Gregor was "an insect all along" and only just turned into his "true form."
ReplyDeleteI liked the opening line because it reminded me of a proof: Assume you're a bug. Now what? Gregor continued through the book so far with that rational thinking, all the time trying to make the best of the situation - his voice doesn't work anymore, so he tries enunciating more clearly; he missed the 5:00 AM train so he'll take the 8:00 AM, even though he's a big. In the back of my mind though, I'm wondering why Gregor doesn't write some message on the floor to his sister, maybe with the milk. We know he's literate - he reads the newspaper and railroad timetables. It seems like the logical thing to do. Perhaps Gregor doesn't know what to write or if it would help; saying "hi" won't change the fact that he's a giant insect.
ReplyDeleteI've actually found The Metamorphosis kind of funny so far, mostly due to this worldview of Gregor's. He deals with things head-on, instead of trying to think of ways around them or wishing they hadn't happened. Before he was an insect, he automatically took up responsibility for his father's debt and didn't even seem to think there was any other route he could have taken. Once he turns into an insect, he takes this same approach to everyday tasks -- he just tries to deal with them like normal, and just accepts that he's now a giant insect without seemingly struggling with that fact.
ReplyDeleteThe Metamorphosis has to be one of the best books we have read this quarter. The direct yet comical story keeps me entertained and wanting to read more. In contrast to Mrs. Dalloway, which invested a lot of its pages to the past and philosophy, the Metamorphosis goes straight into the action and provides commentary on the external (e.g. Gregor's work). I don't know, maybe I just enjoy Gregor's reactions to his increasingly bizarre situation. Either way, I'm definitely looking forward to what comes next.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your emphasis on the fact that Gregor considers only the "inconveniences" of becoming an insect. Kafka seems to be saying "forget about realism"; as Mr. Mitchell pointed out in class one day, the whole book could be interpreted as a social experiment. If someone were given the first line of this book, and told "fill in the rest", there would be two options: a). move forward with a series of added, random plot twists that don't make any sense, or b). run with the story, taking the first line as it were happening to you. The only difference in The Metamorphosis is that Kafka is the one writing, and he wants to build a narrative about Gregor Samsa's possibly debilitating work ethic.
ReplyDeleteOn the unexplained itches that make being a bug inconvenient: what in the world are the white dots?? For some reason they really freak me out. And they seem so unnecessary. What do disease/parasite-like white dots contribute to the criticism of capitalism or dehumanizing work ethics? I feel like parts of this story are just Kafka trying to freak us out.
ReplyDeleteIt's really sad that Gregor is more worried about work than he is about his own health. The environment he lives in really seems to be bad for him. His own father beat him (when he knew that even though he was a bug, he was still Gregor) and he didn't even fight back because he automatically assumed it was ok for him to be treated like that. I would be very confused if I were in his position or in a position of any of his family members, but I would never treat him the way his father did. I think Gregor is still processing the fact that he is a bug. While he is aware that he is a bug, there are some things that he still tries to do as humanly as possible, which isn't working out very well for him.
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