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I was curious about kafka's work from a very long time. Booktok and Bookstragram is filled with the praise of his works and his quotes and seeing everybody talk about him, I wanted to give his works a try. So, I started with this book.
The Metamorphosis By Kafka
Synopsis: (From Amazon) One of the best literary works of Franz Kafka, the Metamorphosis depicts the story of Gregor Samsa, a sales man, who becomes a bug overnight and confines himself to his room. The story is a symbolic tale of a young man, who is unexpectedly afflicted by a disease (his turning into a bug), the subsequent reactions of his family (grief, resignation, endurance and then hatred) and his eventual death, which brings peace to the family.
Review
Although intially I was a little confused and bored. Once I read further in the book, I started getting more interested into the storyline. Infact, more than the storyline what captivated me and kept me engaged was the reaction from the family members. I stayed because I wanted to know where would they stand with this. And boy did they dissapoint me.
So, this Gregor samsa wakes up one morning to realize that he has turned into a big and ugly bug. He can't get up and go to work. At the time he was the one supporting the family of four: his mother, father, sister and himself. Mother and sister were at home and father too sat idly at home. Gregor was a traveling salesman and had to travel alot. He worked for long hours through his sickness and sadness to support the family. But it was astonishing to see how the same family turned his back on him when he became he was no longer able to support himself.
The family struggled financially since Gregor was the sole breadwinner of the family and now everybody had to contribute financially to keep the family going. His father started going to work as a bank messenger, mother started sewing and sister started as a salesgirl in a local shop. In the end, they even had to rent their place to keep the finances in check. Whether the resentment towards Gregor came from the financial fall of the family or because they couldn't see the only son of the family in such a sad state, it was unclear to me. But I felt pity and sympathetic towards both Gregor and the family.
I looked up the internet for the theories of this book and there are a lot. But the most that popped up was theories like Absurdism, Alienation and Existentialism. I don't know which theory do I side with but it is extremely painful to see that in this world, a person's worth and respect in the family is defined by his capacity to fulfill his given responsibilities. Although, I do not have any resistance towards this line of thinking ' That a person should be capable of fulfilling his responsbilitiy otherwise what is life? or what is the purpose of life anyway.' But being resentful and getting comforted by the death of the one who once held the whole family in his palm was saddening.
The book has earned it's name as an all time literary classic and it makes sense why. However, in the end Gregor dies and I couldn't shake off this unsettling feeling in my heart when I finsihed reading the book. I was hanging on the hope that Gregor will turn back to being human at some point in the book but it never happened.
The part that I like the most about this book was samsa's realization about himself. The realization we too went through as readers. Most of the time we live our life for others, infact all of our life we live just for the other people around us. We see that in the book, that after transforming into bug, Gregor hated himself, hated himself for his incapability, for him being incapable to provide and that comes from the concept that he valued himself solely because he was a provider. Even people around him, though they were his own parents measured his worth with his capability. So , when he lost his identity that he made of himself, he felt completely alone and isolated.
For me, this novella was absurdly comforting and eye opening at the same time.
Let me know in the comments how did you feel after reading this book.
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