Franz Kafka
German
Published 1915 (written in 1912)
Introduction
Did you ever groan at the thought of getting out of bed and going towork? Have you ever felt belittled by your boss and misunderstood by your co-workers? Haveyou ever felt your family didn't appreciate the hours you put in at work or the money youbrought in? I know, I know, who hasn't. But take heart at least you haven't changedinto "monstrous vermin" (3).
Unlike Gregor, the protagonist of The Metamorphosis, you probably willnever undergo a literal transformation into vermin. But perhaps, on a particularly bad daywhen your alarm doesn't go off, your car won't start, and your boss is waiting for you bythe time-clock as you punch in one hour and twenty eight minutes late, you mayfiguratively feel like, well, vermin. This figurative sense is what Kafka would like thereader to glean from the story. We aren't supposed to read this as a realistic story like TheAwakening, instead, as in Candide, the actions in this story often suggestbroader meanings. More like a parable than a work of realism, Kafka is interesting insuggesting, not telling. He presents the readers not with a single message, but with avariety of them, and through a variety of means. As readers we have to interpret theexaggerations of the story not as an attempt at fantasy, but as an attempt to render theunconscious into the physical: a depiction of the fears, anxiety, and desires of anoppressed and alienated individual. In an odd way, the distorted view of"reality" in The Metamorphosis renders the "real" world in aheightened, more accessible form. This figurative sense lends it a timelessness,transforming a story concerning the plight of an early 20th century Germantextile salesman into the plight of any worker caught in the daily grind of capitalism.
This is essentially a Marxist reading of the story, and since I've brought upMarxism, it would be a good idea for me to define it. Marxism is an economic theory ofculture and thus a social view of literature based mainly on Karl Marx'sview of the antagonistic relationship between the proletariat and the capitalist. In thisview, the capitalist exploits workers by literally profiting from their labor. A parasiticview of capital, this theory looks askance at business practices which pay a worker, say$8.00 an hour, while the capitalist is making, say $16.00 an hour, on the workerslabor. That difference is called profit motive by capitalists and exploitation byMarxists. In literature, Marxist criticism is often employed to explain the dynamic inclass differences, the tensions between worker and employer, and the debilitating effectsof poverty or wage-slavery.
Since reading the story solely with this in mind seems about asmuch fun as plowing through the collected works of Chairman Mao, I'm not going to make themistake of Stanley Corngold in his introduction and focus on only one theme (in his case,the autobiographical); a work this rich should not be limited to only one interpretation.As one critic observes, Kafka's special talent "was for finding concrete metaphorsand symbolic situations which are so replete with potential meaning that they can beconstrued in a great variety of ways" (Goodden 4). Accordingly, well try andextract as many "potential meaning[s]" from the story as we can. Illconcentrate on its examination of authority and power, its depiction of the alienation ofmodern man, and its vivid dramatization of Freudian views of familial relationships you can concentrate on whatever seems to emerge from your own readings. As Kafka oncesaid, "one reads in order to ask questions" (qtd. in Manguel 89).
Still, at a time when corporate mergers are hailed while the layoffs they causeare ignored or accepted as the cost of the "Global Economy;" a time that hasseen steadily increasing corporate profits and stagnant or decreasing real wages; and atime when political offices are more like seats on the stock exchange than forums forpublic improvement, a story like The Metamorphosis acts as an corrective, awarning of the end results of such practices. Unfortunately, it is doubtful if AlanGreenspan, Rupert Murdoch or other titans of capital would respond sympathetically toGregor's plight. Safe within their plush cocoons insulated with treasury bonds and accountbooks from offshore tax shelters and Swiss bank account certificates, they would not offeran IMF bailout to help out the Samsa's, but would first sternly warn Gregor to "getover it." Shifting to a more reverent tone, they would piously state that in the neweconomy reversals of fortunes are to be expected, embraced, and worshipped. Us workingstiffs can only hope that Greenspan et al., will wake up one morning, after a night of"unsettling dreams" and find themselves changed in their beds into . . . .
The Times
Political
First, a quick note on Germanys influence on Kafka. While technically aCzechoslovakian living for most of his life in the capital city of Prague, Kafka wasraised in a German-speaking household and went to German schools. Part of what was thencalled the Austro-Hungarian empire, Czechoslovakia had a large population of transplantedGermans who, while they assimilated to some degree into Czech society, maintained theirties to the fatherland through language and culture. Ernst Pawel, one of the bestbiographers of Kafka, points out that there was a "wholehearted, not to say blind,commitment to German culture on the part of Prauges German and especiallyGerman-Jewish minority" (214). This commitment manifested itself inKafkas abiding love for German literature, and his abiding interest in Germanculture.
The story was written in 1912, on the cusp of the first war to end all wars, WorldWar I, and premonitions of the impending conflict are found in the theme of authority inthe story. The genesis of the war, in part, is based on German aspirations for power. Atthe turn of the century, the clear world power was Great Britain: it was said that"the sun never set on the British Empire" because of its colonial outposts flungall around the world. However, as the 20th century dawned, Germany was becomingmore prosperous and wanted to become a bigger player on the world stage. Unfortunately,nations typically assert their dominance through war. Whats interesting in the storyis not any hidden references to the coming war; instead the belligerence of war makes itsappearance in a cultural fashion. The strictures of war mean that control over theindividual is more pronounced and even welcomed by the people. Any dissent is quickly,often violently, crushed.
Social/Cultural
The cultural ethos of Germany, with its tendency to fall under the sway of a strongleader or authority figure, fed into the governments desire for war. Adolf Eichmann,henchman for Hitler, wrote the following comments for his autobiography: "Obeying anorder was the most important thing to me. . . .It could be that is in the nature of theGerman." "Now that I look back . . . I realize that a life predicated on beingobedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reducesto a minimum ones own need to think" (qtd. in "Eichmann" 2). While inpart a self-serving excuse for his role in the Holocaust, this also points to a the desirein the German culture to abide by the rules, and to look to and obey authority figures. InThe Metamorphosis this love of authority is exhibited both by the images ofdominance and control associated with Gregors job, and the relationship between himand his father.
The Arts
From an aesthetic point of view, the story fits in with two movements, onespecific and one more general, that were changing the way serious artists articulatedtheir ideas. German Expressionism, a movement which flowered from the turn of the centuryuntil the end of WWI, saw painters and sculptors using distortion or heavily stylizedtechniques to express their own personal visions of reality. For some, it was an attemptto limn the unconscious and depict the raw, unfiltered perceptions that lay there. Aconscious break from the more representational art of the previous century, these artistsdelighted in exaggeration or, more bluntly outrageousness, because only then, or so theybelieved, could they penetrate the deep layer of apathy, ennui, or more simplycomplacency, that deadened the public's sensibilities. Edvard Munch's "TheScream" is the most obvious example of this.
A symbol of thehopeless response to the despair facing modern man, this iconic image, with its distorted,cadaverous figure issuing a silent scream to a barren landscape, is an apt symbol of thealienation facing modern man.
In a similarfashion, Egon Schiele's garishly colored and distorted "Self Portrait" reflectsthe sense of self-loathing that permeates Gregors thoughts in "TheMetamorphosis." Read with these art movements in mind, the distortion andexaggerations in the story are meant, like the paintings of the German Expressionists, todepict Kafka's view of reality and to jolt the reader out of complacency and into a directconnection with art.
More broadly, German Expressionism fit into the Modernist movement, which rebelledagainst the prevailing bourgeois ethos. Kafka and other modernists revolted against themiddle-class notions of propriety and sense of moral superiority by refusing to conform totheir expectations. In an 1904 letter to Oskar Pollak, Kafka sets out his aesthetic ofliterature, an aesthetic which mirrors the modernist intention to shock the audience:
I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesnt shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, wed be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe. (qtd. in Manguel 93)
Thus, in The Metamorphosis, his experiments with point of view, plot andcharacterizations, as well as his conception of reality, which apparently included ratherstartling transformations (and the odd, unsettlingly casual manner with which they areaccepted) amount to a thumb in the eye of convention. This story is not Chicken Soupfor the Soul.
Science/Philosophy
As many critics have noted, the novel is also colored by the views ofthe prevailing psychological theorist of the time, Sigmund Freud. His Interpretationof Dreams had been published just twelve years before the story was written, and inEurope, his ideas and views on life, particularly family dynamics, were widelydisseminated. While its often difficult to discern the degree to which any outsideinfluences affected a particular writer, Kafka left a paper trail making clear hisconnection to the psychologist and thinker. Writing about "The Judgement" (astory about a surreal and antagonistic conflict between a father and son) two monthsbefore he composed Metamorphosis, he noted in his diary "Thoughts aboutFreud of course." Freud is perhaps best known for his theory of the Oedipal Conflict,which suggests that the tensions between a father and son are based on unconscious andunresolved incestuous desires. Another Freudian idea displayed in the story is thestruggle between the id (the instinctive, irrational unconscious mind), the ego (therationalized, conscious mind), and the superego (the mind's use of extrinsic cultural andsocial forces that suppress the id and foster altruistic actions). On these and otherlevels, the story can be read almost as a casebook on Freudian tendencies. While it ispossible to read too much Freud into this, or any work, the predominance of Freudian viewsmake it a fruitful area of study.
Moving from science to ethics, the philosophy of existentialism, was prominentamong European writers and thinkers from the early 1900s to the second World War. In TheMetamorphosis, it plays an important role in the alienation of the Gregor. In short,existentialism is the belief that man is alone and free in an indifferent and often cruelworld. While this view can be exhilarating you are responsible for your ownexistence and can shape it as you may for many writers, it signifies the absurdityof any attempt at action: in the long run, all is futile. This leads to a sense ofalienation because it makes each person, to borrow the time-worn phrase, an island, aworld apart and separate from others. Obviously, such a belief can lead to feelings ofloneliness and isolation, which, in turn, can lead to alienation. It is this morepessimistic view that is on display in The Metamorphosis. Or is it? You folks candecide if Gregor's actions are ultimately pessimistic or fulfilling.
The Life
See the introduction by Stanley Corngold for biographical information --though do so only after you read the novel. While I disagree with Corngold's view ofthe novel as autobiographical (though it has, of course, connections with Kafka's life),the information should help round out your understanding of the work.
Two notes on German:
The German title, "Die Verwandlung," also denotes a scene change in a theatre.
The German word for debt, "schuld," also mean guilt andself-hatred which makes it easy to understand why Germany has one of the lowestrates of credit default in the western world.
Questions to Mull OverAs You Read
- How does Kafka show Gregor is alienated from his family, society, and his co-workers? Be prepared to cite specific quotes
- Compare the cartoon with the story itself. In particular, look at the reactions of the boss in the cartoon and the reactions of the family. Look for similarities.
- Why did Kafka tell his publisher, concerning illustrations for the book "The insect itself cannot be depicted. It cannot even be shown from a distance"
- Why does Gregor turn into "monstrous vermin"? Consider the connotation of the words.
- How does Kafka characterize the family? Look, especially, at the descriptions surrounding the first time each character is introduced.
- Describe Grete's treatment of Gregor in each of the sections. How does it change? Some critics have called this a story, not about Gregor, but about the family could this be true? How? Do they change as well? How?
- Trace Gregor's adaptation to his new body (find at least three examples a hint to start p. 17). Does he accept his fate? Why? What does this suggest about humans identifying/adapting to their circ*mstances?
- Why is Gregor so upset about Grete and his mother clearing his room? What had he been "on the verge of forgetting?" (33)? Why does he want to keep the cut out of the girl (what would Freud who Kafka read say about her and Gregor's actions)?
- Does Gregor just give up and die (see 54)? Does this fit in with his character? Why or why not? Could he be considered a sacrificial lamb? How?
- What is the mood of the final paragraph of the story? Consider the setting and the actions of the characters? What words and actions suggest this? What is Kafka suggesting, by their feelings towards their dead son, about the ultimate fate of humans in society?
Works Cited
"Eichmann, in Memoirs, Tries to Explain His Psyche." New York Times15 August 1999, sec. 4: 2.
Goodden, Christian. "Points of Departure." The KafkaDebate. Ed. Angel Flores. New York: Gordian
Press, 1977. 2-9.
Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. New York: Viking, 1996
Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. New York:Farrar, Straus, Giroux,
1984.
© 2001David Bordelon
