Metamorphosis

Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is one of his most famous works of the 20th century. Kafka probably influenced major thinkers such as Sartre and Heidegger. While reading it, the most important keyword that came to my mind was “social dignity.”

One morning, Gregor Samsa wakes from uneasy dreams and discovers that in bed he has been transformed into a hideous insect. His back is covered with a hard, armor-like shell, his belly is divided into several brown, curved segments, and above it his thin legs tremble weakly. The tips of those legs scrape the floor uselessly, and his whole body twists awkwardly on the bed.

He tries to move, but this unfamiliar body does not obey him properly. Even so, Gregor is not shocked by the transformation itself; instead, he worries that he overslept and will be late for work. As a traveling salesman he supported his family, and he was supposed to catch an early train that morning. All that circles in his head is lateness, his boss’s face, and punishment.

Voices of his family come from outside the room. His mother asks anxiously, his father knocks and tells him to come out, and his sister Grete softly calls his name. Soon, the company’s prokurátor (agent/representative) arrives and threatens that if Gregor does not open the door, he could be fired. The voices outside grow more and more impatient.

Gregor tries to answer, but the only sound that comes out is an unintelligible hissing, almost like a sob. Panicking, he climbs down from the bed and crawls toward the door, scraping along the floor. He drags himself forward, pushes, slips, collapses, and stops again and again. After struggling for a long time, he finally manages to steady himself, reach the lock, and open the door.

When the door opens, his family and the agent are struck with horror at the sight of him. His mother screams and faints, his father steps back in tears, and the agent, unable to speak, grabs his hat and bolts down the stairs to escape. Furious, Gregor’s father drives him back into the room with a rolled-up newspaper and slams the door. In the process, Gregor injures one of his legs. After that, he remains shut inside his room.

At first, Grete brings him food and tries to care for him. She places fresh milk and bread on a plate, but Gregor turns his head away from the smell—he no longer likes it. Before long, Grete starts bringing rotten vegetables and fruit, scraps of cheese, and leftovers, and Gregor devours them eagerly, scraping at the floor.

Gregor comes to enjoy crawling along the walls and ceiling, moving with relative freedom inside the room. His legs cling and slide along the surface. Whenever he hears someone about to enter, he quickly hides his body under the sofa. As time passes, the family’s attitude changes. His father finds work again, his mother takes up sewing, and Grete also begins working.

The family gradually comes to see Gregor as a burden. One day, Grete and their mother enter the room. Grete says,
“We should move the furniture out. Gregor looks like he can hardly move in here.”
At first, their mother nods. The two of them begin carrying furniture out piece by piece. A chair is taken out, then the bookcase is dragged away.

The bare floor is exposed, and the room’s acoustics change; sounds bounce back more loudly. Gregor, afraid his family might be startled, pulls the blanket over his body to hide himself. But while moving a heavy wardrobe, their mother grows exhausted and pauses to catch her breath. Then she suddenly says,
“This doesn’t feel right. These are Gregor’s things. When we clear them out, it feels like Gregor is disappearing completely.”

Hearing that, Gregor feels as if his mind snaps awake. The words seem right to him, and he crawls out from under the blanket, climbs the wall, and clings to one of the framed pictures. He presses his body flat against the wall and grips the frame with his legs. Seeing this, his mother screams and collapses in a faint.

Soon his father returns, sees what has happened, and flies into a rage. He grabs an apple from the table and hurls it at Gregor. One apple lodges in Gregor’s back, leaving a deep wound. His body stiffens from the pain, and he crawls back into his room with difficulty. From that injury onward, Gregor grows weaker and weaker.

To earn even a little more money, the family takes in three lodgers. The house fills with unfamiliar footsteps and the smell of tobacco. One evening, Grete plays the violin for the lodgers. Drawn by the beautiful sound, Gregor cautiously opens his door and crawls out into the sitting room. Enchanted by the music, he inches his way toward the lodgers.

The lodgers do not seem to enjoy the music at all. They smoke and sit silently, as if out of mere politeness. Gregor feels that only he understands the true value of the music. He remembers conversations in which he had promised to send Grete to a music school. He imagines that he could keep his sister in his room forever and live with her there.

But soon they notice Gregor. The lodgers recoil with shouts, and in the end they leave without paying rent. That night, the family sits at the table to discuss what to do about Gregor. Grete speaks first:
“This is no longer Gregor. We can’t go on living like this.”

The family decides to abandon Gregor and stop feeding him. The next morning at dawn, Gregor dies quietly. His body is shriveled and no longer moves. In the morning, the cleaning woman opens the door and discovers his corpse.
“He’s dead.”
The family takes time off from their jobs, and they feel as if their new dreams and plans might finally go smoothly.

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Why did Gregor turn into an insect? In fact, even before becoming an insect, Gregor already had almost no self. More precisely, his self had already been completely exploited by those around him, leaving him without the ability to think for himself.

The author gives an extremely blatant hint. Later in the story there is a passage where Gregor himself thinks that his strongest pride was not in ability or achievement, but in consideration for others. He lived by internalizing other people’s expectations rather than forming his own thoughts. He felt work was hard, he suffered under his boss’s bullying, and he had only an animal-like instinct that reacted to pain and pressure—but no independent desire. What changed was his usefulness: from someone who brought in money to a useless burden.

The family receives Gregor’s transformation not as a personal tragedy but as a social disgrace. The “insect” was tolerated when it was useful; once it became useless, it turned into a nuisance. The family never lets go of saving face, and only after Gregor’s death do they begin a stable new life. They do menial work for others, save money, and plan to move to a home with lower living costs.

Grete seems like a brief exception. Early on, she observes Gregor’s eating habits and his urge to move, trying to infer his desires. This is the only attempt to treat him as a subject. But that awakening soon disappears.

Perhaps the most striking scene is the “framed picture” incident that happens while they are clearing the room. At first, the mother agrees with Grete’s opinion—“We should remove the furniture because Gregor looks like he can hardly move.” But as she grows tired from carrying things, she suddenly produces a justification: “We can’t throw away the objects that hold Gregor’s memories.”

Gregor’s way of thinking is revealed very clearly here. Up to that moment he has had almost no thoughts at all, but he immediately clings to his mother’s words as if they were absolute truth. His action mirrors it exactly: he clings to the framed picture. He clings to meaning that belongs to someone else.

If we think about it deductively, it looks like this. The mother’s logic is A, and Grete’s logic, opposed to it, is not A. The basis for not A is an existential one: it would make Gregor’s movement easier. But when Grete tries to carry out not A, she has a deeply unpleasant experience—because of Gregor’s non-existential obedience that has always been there, his clinging to A.

Grete can define the cause of her unpleasantness as “because I was existential.” In any case, in that scene there are two people who are non-existential, and only one person who is existential.

After that, for a while, in Gregor’s mind his sister is called “Grete” rather than simply “sister.” Is it because she briefly woke up to those elements that formed the frame of cognition long before a person can consciously recognize it? But then she returns to being “sister” again—reduced back into a person inside the network of relations.

Another notable figure is the cleaning woman. She is someone who has almost no interest in keeping up appearances. Yet Gregor does not connect with her either, because he has never learned how to interact with such an individual. The fact that she is the one who handles Gregor’s final end is also quite meaningful.

In truth, Gregor did not change. He was an insect from the beginning. And so are we all.