Exploring Franz Kafka’s masterpieces ‘The Metamorphosis’ and ‘The Trial’, we delve deeply into human existence, alienation, and an absurd world.
The opening lines of Franz Kafka’s (1883–1924) ‘The Metamorphosis’ are shocking to anyone who reads them, no matter when. Long ago, in my youth, I too was shocked.
One morning, after a troubled sleep, Gregor Samsa woke to find himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He lay on his back with his armored-hard back pressed to the floor. When he lifted his head slightly, he saw his slightly bulging belly, divided by arched lines of hardened scales. The blanket hung precariously, as if it might slip off at any moment. Countless legs, disproportionately thin compared to his body, waved helplessly before his eyes.
Transformation magic is a kind of sorcery. It is the sorcery that allows one to change one’s form at will. The protagonist of ‘The Metamorphosis’, ‘Gregor Samsa’, also transformed from a human into an insect, so he essentially wielded a kind of sorcery. The problem, however, is that he did not wield that sorcery by his own will. One morning, upon waking from sleep, he suddenly found himself transformed into an insect! Why did ‘Gregor Samsa’ suddenly turn into an insect one day? Let’s answer simply in one sentence. Because inside the man named ‘Gregor Samsa’, who appeared human, an insect was living.
That is the nature of metamorphosis. One can become a lion, an eagle, or a rabbit according to one’s needs because the attributes of those beasts already reside within. Therefore, those who live with only one fixed appearance and mindset are those who have not mastered the art of metamorphosis. Those who laugh when they should cry and cry when they should laugh are the ones skilled in metamorphosis. When the entire universe and all its phenomena reside within me, transformation becomes effortless. That state is the realm of enlightenment, the very state Confucius described as “following one’s heart’s desire without transgression.” Even if we cannot reach that state, as long as we are human, we all live by learning transformation to some degree.
But just because transformation is a kind of magic doesn’t mean it’s always positive. Sometimes it’s used to wear a mask and hide one’s true self. We call that hypocrisy. It means the outward appearance, the masked and transformed self, is fake, while the real self is concealed. Then again, not all hypocrisy is negative. The existence of hypocrites in the world could also be proof that the world isn’t yet that shameless. Even though they disguise themselves outwardly to deceive others, it means that people respect the values the hypocrite presents on the surface. While deceiving and being deceived is problematic, it also signifies a world where both deceivers and the deceived agree on what constitutes desirable human attitudes and actions. But a world where even hypocrisy is unnecessary is problematic. It is a world where raw, unbridled desire is laid bare without shame. Such a world is truly a shameless, beastly place. People lie without a shred of remorse, and even when their lies are blatantly obvious, they feel no shame. And a world where no one condemns this lying is a truly terrifying place. A world where few people lament, “How can someone wearing a human mask do such things!”—such a world is truly terrifying.
Yet Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ presents an even more despairing vision than that terrifying world. It shows a world where humans and insects are completely reversed. Once transformed into an insect, ‘Gregor Samsa’ cannot return to being human. He lives briefly as an insect and dies as one. Even those who transform through magic return to their true form at death. Thus, his death as an insect signifies that this was Gregor Samsa’s true nature all along. Rather, it means he had been living all that time wearing a false mask, transformed into a human. In other words, he had already become an insect, or was living as an insect-like being, yet refused to acknowledge it, persisting in wearing the mask of humanity.
Then why was it specifically ‘Gregor Samsa’ who turned into a bug? While others wore the mask of humanity and lived well, was he alone unable to do so? While others lived as humans, did he truly live as a bug? No matter how you look at it, that’s not the case. He was, by all appearances, a man who lived a truly human life. He was an exemplary son and brother, working diligently from dawn to support his family, and a model employee at his company. If anything, it was his family, living off his sacrifice, who were the true parasites. So why did he, of all people, transform into a bug? Was he a victim punished? Yes. He is clearly a victim. While others wear the mask of humanity and live well, he alone could not. He is undoubtedly a victim.
But precisely at this point, we must seriously question the meaning of sacrifice. The essence of sacrifice is to forget or bury the past and experience death in order to be reborn. The original meaning of sacrifice lies in rebirth. Yet sacrifice also carries a more active meaning. This is precisely the meaning of sacrifice in sacrificial rites. There, sacrifice carries the meaning of atonement. Sacrifice is when one gives up one’s life to atone for the sins of others (Jesus Christ), and it is also when one gives up one’s life for the welfare of many (the death of a hero on the battlefield). The grain that rots to yield a greater harvest—that is the very meaning of the sacrificial ritual. Precisely in this sense, the sacrificial victim is not one who vanishes in vain, but rather one who, unlike others, actively questions and pursues the meaning of life, and to some degree achieves that meaning. In the sacrificial ritual, the one who becomes the offering is not a victim, but a hero.
Then, we can interpret the scene where ‘Gregor Samsa’ transforms into a bug as the moment he becomes aware that he has been living as a bug, the moment he acknowledges that he has been living as a bug, the moment he decides that although he has lived diligently until now, he has merely lived having lost his true self, and that from now on, he cannot continue living wearing the mask of such a false human. And the more active meaning lies in the latter. The reason we shudder when reading the opening scene of The Metamorphosis isn’t merely because it makes us realize we’re all living insect-like lives. We feel the shock because it compels us to reflect on our own insect-like existence and contemplate what a non-insect-like life might be. We shudder not because it points a finger at us saying, “Hey, you worm!” but because it powerfully pleads, “You can’t live like this, like a worm, and then just die.” There, we seem to hear a voice saying, “This is not a human life. This is a worm-like existence. My life has no meaning. Calling me human is a deception!”
That voice contains a profoundly urgent question: “What truly is a human life? Are we beings with meaning simply by virtue of being born human? Where does the meaning of my life as a human lie?”
Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ holds significance as a work that seriously and piercingly poses this urgent question in an era where such questioning has become necessary once more.
Let us ask here: Why did Kafka, active in the early 20th century, pose such a desperate question? Why was that question inevitably so piercing? Of course, there can be many views on this. The simplest answer is that as the 20th century dawned, humanity’s own conviction about the meaning of human existence—long taken for granted—was shaken to its very roots.
There was an era when people held firm convictions about human existence and its meaning. In times when humans lived religious lives, gods existed alongside them. One need only read Greek tragedies like Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’ to understand this without overcomplicating it. Humans and gods even intermarried. Humans themselves became beings akin to gods, thus inherently noble. The heroes in ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’ were beings who valued human honor as noble beings above all else. In such a world, the answer to the question of how to live a truly human life was self-evident. Therefore, there was no need to agonize over that question.
Meanwhile, the Christian Bible states that the Creator made humans in His own image. Humans were thus of the same bloodline as the Creator. Moreover, since God presides over this world, it is meant to function rationally (?) under His governance. The very existence of humans in this world is by the noble will of God, so its meaning is inherently given. Furthermore, there is no need for humans to agonize over the question of how to live rightly. The path is already laid out by God’s will. Even if one occasionally feels they are living wrongly, they need only reproach themselves for defying God’s will.
However, as the Renaissance dawned, the situation changed. Human reason began to occupy the place once held by God; that is precisely what the Renaissance was. To put it simply, the reason for human existence and the value of human existence came to be placed squarely in human reason, placing humanity at the center of the universe. By the 19th century, people came to hold the tremendous belief that the utopia once dreamed of as possible only in heaven could be achieved on earth through the power of human reason. This was precisely the positivism and scientism of 19th-century Europe. Since human reason had replaced God’s place, it was an era where the very fact of human existence became an immense blessing and meaning.
However, upon entering the 20th century, this belief collapsed due to various circumstances. A prime example is this: human society, which seemed to be advancing toward a utopia overflowing with love and peace through the power of human reason, ended up waging an unprecedentedly horrific world war. Faced with this horrific reality, people could only ask, bewildered:
‘How did it come to this? Where did it all go wrong?’
It was precisely in this context that people began to ask anew what kind of being humans are. In the void where the answer once thought self-evident had been cast aside—or, in other words, where the pre-given meaning of human existence had vanished—questions like ‘What is a human being? What is the meaning of human existence? How does humanity differ from other animals on Earth?‘”
It’s fair to say that nearly all European intellectuals in the early 20th century grappled with these questions. They sought meaning for human existence, which suddenly seemed to have been thrown into ruins without purpose. And Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ stands precisely at that point of posing those questions.
So let us ask again. Is humanity truly a being that comes and vanishes without meaning? Is merely enduring day by day truly a human life? Is a life spent working hard to earn money, supporting a family, achieving moderate success, maintaining moderate relationships with others, and then vanishing—is that a human life? If so, how is it different from a life born as an insect and simply dying as an insect? How on earth did it come to this?
‘The Trial’ adds an even more horrific scenario to that difficult question. That humans are more wretched beings than such insects—that is precisely the world ‘The Trial’ shows us. K in ‘The Trial’ is suddenly arrested and dragged into a criminal prosecution. And without even receiving a proper trial, he vanishes into the mist of the executioner’s blade. More importantly, he dies without ever knowing what crime he committed. If there is a crime, it is only that K is human. Does this mean that the very existence of humans is not merely meaningless, but that their existence itself must be a crime, making them beings worse than vermin? Must they die while making the futile protest or excuse, “I am innocent. I have no idea what crime I committed,” a defense utterly unnecessary for a vermin-like existence? Is the human being such a dreadful creature? As clearly stated in the Christian Bible, is humanity a wretched being—one who has committed original sin yet must live a life utterly devoid of meaning, left before a meaningless death with nowhere to return? Is humanity a being destined to vanish like dew on the executioner’s blade?
Of course, just like ‘The Metamorphosis’, ‘The Trial’ offers only such questions, no answers. A gloomy situation, where even a faint answer cannot be groped for, only deepens.
So, do Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ and ‘The Trial’ only plunge us into despair? No. Above all, Kafka himself was not trapped in such despair. If he had been, he would never have written his works. What does it mean that he saw this world as entirely bleak? Does it not mean that his yearning for the light was all the more lofty and immense? Does it not mean that precisely because that yearning was so vast and lofty, it could not easily be answered?
Let me rephrase. The answer certainly isn’t found in Kafka’s works. He was a novelist, not a philosopher. But to put it more positively, it’s because there is no definitive answer. If any answer exists, it lies within the question itself, within that despair.
Then let us ask again. Are we truly living lives like insects? Why must we live lives like insects? Am I living as a true human being, yet the world turns me into an insect? If so, how is it possible to live as a human being, not an insect? Why can’t we live as individuals with agency, but must live like parts of a machine? Did humanity truly commit original sin? If so, to whom did we commit this sin? What was the sin directed toward?
As mentioned earlier, Western intellectuals have strived to offer their own answers to the questions we just posed. To note in passing, one of the ideologies that most profoundly beguiled people during this process of questioning and searching, as if it were the definitive answer, was Marxism. And in a sense, Marxism stands on the continuum of positivism and scientism, which believed the advent of utopia in this world was possible. Marxism is an ideology that elevated history to the status of absolute truth, replacing God and reason. It asserted that through materialist dialectics, a proletarian-ruled utopia—a society where all people are equal—would inevitably and objectively come to pass on earth. Yet Marxism lacks precisely two crucial elements. Namely, humanity and reality. Since history is said to inevitably progress toward a world of universal equality, humanity has no function to perform within that absolute history. There is only the path of becoming a cog that merely aligns with the flow of history, or else becoming a reactionary force that resists that flow. Presenting humanity with only these two choices is tantamount to forcing humanity to abandon its very humanity. Moreover, if the entirety of human life is merely a process leading toward the utopia Marxism aims for, then we all become mere relay runners, existing only to pass the baton to the next generation and then step aside. The life we actually live becomes meaningless in itself. Within that vast current of history, there is no room for our concrete lives, our reality.
The questions Kafka posed through his works touch upon such grand answers. Yet the meaning of his work does not lie within those answers. Its meaning lies in making us reflect on our concrete lives, our reality—the very things overlooked by those grand answers. Its meaning lies in suddenly posing that question to us, who live day to day without the time or space to ask why we live.
‘Am I living without knowing I am a bug? Or do I know it and yet accept it as natural? If so, am I living in a world where being a bug is not strange, but being human is?’
We said there was no answer to this, yet Kafka’s The Metamorphosis does hint at an answer through Gregor Samsa’s earnest wish.
Gregor’s sister would sit beside him on the sofa, leaning forward with her ear to him, and he would confide in her that he had always intended to send her to the conservatory, that, but for this disaster, he would have told everyone last Christmas—surely Christmas was far enough past not to be a sore point anymore?—and that he would not have let any objections stand in his way. After these declarations his sister would break out in tears of emotion, and Gregor would raise himself to her shoulder and kiss her on the neck, which, since she had been going out to work, she kept bare without any necklace or collar.
What he yearned for was not grand. It was communication and understanding between people. To become human again! To share affection! How simple a dream is that? Yet how difficult a dream it is!
If we live in a world where we cannot communicate with others and human relationships are severed, we might all be living lives like insects. If we live anonymously, holding only the shameful parts we don’t want others to see, we might all have become insects. If we abandon our better nature and fall into the worship of money and idols, we might have become insects. Yet, within our self-consciousness, we might stubbornly insist, ‘I am human! I’m human!‘ in our self-consciousness. Only when we ask ourselves desperately, ‘Am I truly living a human life?’ might we admit, ‘I’m no different from a bug,’ and perhaps seek a different way of life.
When we question the meaning of life on a grand scale, we suddenly feel small. A poet once sang, ‘Sand, how small I am!’ This was neither an outcry of personal powerlessness nor a lament of life’s meaninglessness. It was a cry of how insignificant my life appears when measured against the greater, true meaning we have forgotten or lost.
The French philosopher Pascal said, ‘Man is a wretched creature. Yet his greatness lies precisely in knowing he is wretched.’ The moment we think we are great without knowing this, we truly become insignificant. The moment we swell with pride over our intelligence, boast about our wealth, or strut about our success, we become insignificant insects, mere grains of sand.
In that moment, they abandon the path to becoming a truly valuable human being. Humans are not a means to an end; they are an end in themselves. Humans are not beings whose worth can be measured by price; they are beings judged by their qualitative value. There are things in human life that cannot be bought or sold with money. Love, for instance, is one such thing. It cannot be sold. When we love someone, what is filled is not our desire. It is our very existence. The virtue of giving to others does not satisfy our desires; it satisfies our very being. When we eat our fill, our desires are satisfied, but when we help others, what is satisfied is our very existence as human beings. These are different from coveting things, money, or status. Such things can never replace our existence as human beings.
Finally, let me ask: Do you wish to live as a worm? Do you want to become a worm? You would not. The moment you feel intensely that you can never live as a worm, you realize you have been living as a worm all along, that you have now transformed into one. So become a worm. Feel that you are a worm. Only then can you escape the life of a worm.
