Through a commentary on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, we explore the profound symbols and messages of alienation, humanity, and family relationships contained within the novel.
Franz Kafka: A Life of Rejection and Alienation
Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, Czech Republic, within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as the eldest son of a German-speaking Jewish middle-class family. His father, a self-made wholesale jeweler, was pragmatic and authoritarian, while his mother was an intellectual and sensitive woman from a family that produced many scholars, religious figures, and eccentrics. This dynamic of a patriarchal father and a sensitive mother aligns with the parental structure Thomas Mann identified as the genetic background of artists in Tonio Kröger. Moreover, interestingly, this also aligns with the general statistical observation that the greater the genetic difference between parents, the higher the likelihood of producing a genius.
Overall, Kafka’s life was one of rejection and alienation. Physically, he was a Czech Jew, but mentally, he was German. This Germanic inclination led to his rejection by the Czechs, by the Austrians, who were citizens of the empire, he was ignored as a Bohemian from the periphery; by the Germans, he was shunned because he was Jewish; at home, he lived under his father’s authority; by Christians, he was rejected because he was Jewish; by Jews, he was rejected because he was an atheist; and as a writer, he was alienated from the general public. Ultimately, Kafka was a borderline existence: too German to be Jewish, too Bohemian to be German, and too Jewish to be Bohemian. Yet he is classified as a German writer because his work is rooted in German literature, thought, and culture, and because he wrote in German.
His father sent him to a German-language Gymnasium to secure his son’s entry into Prague’s upper class. Here, Kafka encountered German philosophy, socialism, and atheism. It was also during this time that he became engrossed in literary works. From Goethe to Heinrich von Kleist, Adalbert Stifter, Friedrich Hebbel, Grillparzer, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Knut Hamsun, Thomas Mann, Flaubert, Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Robert Walser—the works of countless authors became the spiritual nourishment for his own literature later on.
Kafka enrolled at the German-language Charles Ferdinand University in Prague in 1901. He initially studied chemistry but soon realized it wasn’t his path and sought to shift toward the humanities. However, he ultimately had no choice but to major in law, following his father’s wishes. During his university years, Kafka met a crucial figure indispensable to his literary journey: his lifelong friend Max Brod. This man not only spearheaded the publication and promotion of Kafka’s works but also personally published his posthumous manuscripts after his death. He was the kind of patron of the arts any artist would envy.
In 1906, Kafka received his doctorate in law from Prague University and worked for a year as a legal clerk at the Prague Civil and Criminal Courts. He then moved to an insurance company, working part-time for nearly nine months. He barely earned enough to scrape by, but in exchange, he gained time for writing, which felt like his calling. Then, in 1908, he took a clerical position at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague. Working there for 14 years until his retirement in July 1922, he keenly felt the problems of the bureaucratic apparatus, the dangerous and poor conditions of the workers, the coldness of capitalism, and the inevitable alienation of the individual under that system. This experience served as a crucial motif for the protagonist’s transformation into an insect in “The Metamorphosis.” However, Kafka’s reputation at his actual workplace was good. He was not only always diligent in his duties but also an intelligent and kind person. Yet, a sincere life rooted in civil society did not suit him. Escaping his “dreamlike inner life” was secondary to everything else. He regarded literature as the sole meaning and escape in his life.
Kafka’s relationships with women were contradictory. On one hand, he felt attracted to women and approached them actively; on the other, he displayed defensive attitudes and retreated. He repeatedly became engaged and broke off his engagement to Felice Bauer twice; he announced his engagement to Julie Borchert but later canceled it; he rashly confessed his love to the married Milena Jesenská and was rejected; and with his last lover, Dora Diamant, fifteen years his junior, he experienced his first stable and peaceful relationship, though it was cut short by her early death. Some speculate that erectile dysfunction and homosexual tendencies were the reasons behind these relationships with women, but there is no clear evidence to support this. However, it is true that he had an obsession with writing in isolation, as if confined to a monastery, and a fear of having to dedicate himself to family life.
In 1917, Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis and planned to spend his remaining years recuperating in the countryside. However, his employer denied his pension application, dashing these plans. Later, insomnia and symptoms of nervous exhaustion compounded his struggles, leading him to resign from his job in 1922. He then moved to Berlin intending to live alone with Diamant, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, forcing him to return to his parents’ home. His condition showed no signs of improvement; instead, the tuberculosis bacteria spread to his larynx, leaving him unable to eat or speak. Ultimately, in June 1924, Kafka ended his short life at the age of forty at the Hoffmann Sanatorium.
The Metamorphosis
In German, there is the word ‘kafkaesk’. Generally, it refers to the anxiety and confusion felt when confronted with absurd, mysterious, and threatening situations. In relation to Kafka’s literature, it signifies the helplessness, fear, frustration, and existential threat of an individual overwhelmed by an absurd world and immense power. The author expresses this helplessness through improbable, surreal events and objects. And he does so with remarkable clarity. Each sentence is intensely concrete; there is no abstraction of subjects or sentimental drift in the narration. The descriptions are always precise, objective, and dry. Yet, no matter how meticulous the detail, the events themselves are utterly bizarre, allowing the reader to step back from this bizarre bewilderment and reconsider actual reality. In this sense, “The Metamorphosis” is a quintessentially Kafkaesque work.
The protagonist, Gregor, wakes up one morning suddenly transformed into an insect. Is this a dream or reality? Is it even possible for a human to turn into an insect? Naturally, it’s only possible in the imagination. Moreover, while fairy tales and fables feature humans transforming into animals like cows or frogs, they never turn into insects. It is the so-called worst ‘degrading metamorphosis’. So, is it possible to be upgraded back to human form? In fairy tales, humans transformed into animals usually save or help others in moments of crisis and then return to human form. However, in Kafka’s work, the protagonist continues to live as an insect, is abandoned by his family, and dies in solitude. Why was such a fantastical setting necessary? Yes, it is allegory. The author uses dreamlike, unreal events to speak about reality. Kafka himself explained this work thus: “The Metamorphosis is a terrifying dream. A horrifying imagination. Dreams reveal the reality within the mind. The fear of life. Art exposes it shockingly.” So what reality dwelled within him?
Gregor is a workaholic. After his father’s bankruptcy, the protagonist, now a “traveling salesman,” must support his family. He rises at dawn every day, arriving at work precisely on time. For the past five years, he has never missed a single day. After work, he has no personal life, thinking only of the company. His only “hobby” is making small picture frames with a tiny saw, into which he inserts photos of beautiful women cut from magazines. Even after transforming into an insect, he frets more about missing work than his current plight, his mind consumed solely by the train’s departure time. Work is his entire life. Yet he doesn’t enjoy it. He longs to quit the job and start anew the moment he repays his father’s debt. But for now, he must work. He must work, even if he hates it, even if it hurts, even as an insect. He has no confidence in his own existence; work is the master of his life.
This is precisely the life modern capitalism demands of the individual. Capitalism doesn’t just dominate human life externally; it engraves its principles of domination deep within the individual. No matter how battered and bruised they become, individuals must work, and they must feel “pangs of conscience” even for being “just a few hours late in the morning.” The individual is valued as a component within a vast factory, judged solely by how diligently they perform their assigned role. If one fails to function within this system, they become useless, no better than vermin. This applies equally to Gregor’s family. The German term ‘Ungeziefer’ refers not to ordinary insects, but to pests that prey on healthy people. Thus, Gregor, who can no longer fulfill his duty to support them due to his loss of labor, is now treated not merely as an incapable person but as a being sucking the life out of his family. Such a person is no longer human but, as his family later refers to him, a troublesome “thing” that must be disposed of.
Of course, the family did not show such a heartless attitude from the start. His sister cares for him with a heavy heart, and his mother keeps his room untouched, hoping he will one day return to being human. But even they reach the limits of their patience, and his father, unable to contain his rage, throws an apple that lodges in his son’s back. Here, the apple relates to the biblical symbolism Kafka frequently employs. In the beginning, humans were expelled from paradise for eating the apple, the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. In Kafka’s work, the apple also symbolizes original sin, like a “monument within the visible flesh.” However, while in the Bible, the original sin was acquiring the ‘thought’ to distinguish good from evil, in modern capitalist society, humans like Gregor who fail to perform social functions are deemed sinful and discarded.
On the other hand, Kafka reveals to us the terrifying truth that even the deepest, most unbreakable human bonds, including family, are ultimately nothing but deception. The attitude his family displays from Gregor’s metamorphosis to his death proves that even the household operates solely on the basis of mutual interests of toil and reward, not pure affection. Gregor is ultimately abandoned by his family, and his death is accepted by them as liberation from a heavy burden.
Gregor’s metamorphosis can also be seen as liberation from the shackles imposed on humans by capitalist society. Is there a single office worker who hasn’t dreamed of liberation at least once while waking up in the morning? Some might wish to become a bird, soaring freely through the sky to enjoy a vacation on a beautiful beach. Others might dream of being a whale, swimming freely through the ocean, roaming the world. In this way, Gregor’s metamorphosis can also be seen as an expression of his inner, unconscious desire to shed the burden of his duty to support his family and live a different life.
Now, let’s return to Gregor’s existence. Whether his transformation into an insect represents a metamorphosis of an existence solely devoted to work, or an unconscious desire to escape his past self, trapped by the burden of support, he must now live in an insect’s body. At first, the body is naturally unfamiliar, but over time he gradually adapts, seeking out and indulging in food suited to a bug’s nature. Yet within him, the human remains. He is the kind of human who “endures and shows consideration to the utmost so that his family can bear this unpleasant situation caused by him,” who worries about his family’s future, recalls the past, feels compassion, thinks logically, and is capable of acute sensitivity. Thus, Gregor is a contradictory being, possessing a human mind within a bug’s body. Yet, while his body gradually adapts and he grows accustomed to the life of a bug, his spirit suffers increasing torment from his family’s coldness. Now, Gregor is left with a choice. Should he continue living as a bug, or live as a human?
Gregor’s appetite steadily diminishes. This is partly due to the pain from the apple stuck in his back, and partly due to the sadness over the changed scenery of his familiar room. But the greater reason was the emotional wounds inflicted by his family. Then one day, he realized what food he truly desired. Not food to sustain his physical life, but nourishment for his spirit. It was when his sister played the violin in front of the boarders. The moment he heard the music, Gregor was drawn out of his room as if spellbound, straining to listen. It was as if the path he had longed for, the path to the unknown nourishment he had yearned for, had opened before him. After that, he thought of his family with “tenderness and love.” Perhaps the thought that “he must disappear” was more firmly rooted in him than in his sister. Finally, he laid down his weary, sick body and breathed his last peacefully in the faint dawn light. His metamorphosis carries the meaning of awakening a longing for the human existence within the animal.
On the other hand, after clearing away Gregor’s shriveled corpse, the family went on an outing outdoors, basking in the warm sunshine for the first time in a long while, and spoke of a better future in their relief. Seeing Gregor’s sister blossom into a beautiful, full-figured young woman, his parents conclude it’s time to find her a suitable husband. They feel their “good intentions” were justified. For the reader, this ending cannot help but evoke a sense of sorrow.
