The metamorphosis by Frantz Kafka

[MihaelaIgnat]

If you haven't read the book, do not read this review because it contains spoilers.

I have come across Kafka while snooping through Swiss Cottage Library's shelves. It was just a book about his life.
I took it because the cover on it had Kafka's face and it seemed to have such a deep look, a sad and unsatisfied one.
Everything in his wake went from wrong to wrongest.
The Metamorphosis is a story about a man Gregor Samsa who "awoke one morning from uneasy dreams" and "found himself transformed in his bed as a gigantic insect." This very sentence was the cruel and real definition of his own life: he hated mornings and he always felt awkward. He felt unloved and rejected by everyone because he never had his father's affection.
The author then describes Gregor's torment of being surprised, by his family and the chief clerk from his office, as a cockroach . Gregor could not escape the inevitable as the family went in eventually along with the chief clerk.
As shocking as it seemed to everyone around and as painful and new as it was for Gregor, his father couldn't find within him not even a shred of pity or compassion:"When from behind his father gave him a strong push which was literally a deliverance and he flew far into the room bleeding freely. The door was slammed behind him with the stick, and then at last there was silence."
This paragraph is related to what happened in Kafka's real life. Being young, Frantz asked his father for a glass of water- not knowing if he is thirsty or was just trying to tease his father- he didn't give up on the idea and kept on asking until his father took him by the shoulders, opened the door and put him on the door steps outside.
The only character who truly understands Gregor is his sister. She feeds him every day and comes to visit him in his room as often as she can. Gregor was at all times very happy to see her and he was hoping that his sister would be the one to take his life.
By the end of the poor cockroach's life, the sister develops new feelings towards him: "He must go, that's the only solution, Father"(...)"As it is this creature persecutes us, drives away our lodgers, obviously wants the whole apartment to himself, and would have us all sleep in the gutter. Just look Father, he's at it again!"
As "Gregoroach" gives into the lethal struck he got from his sister he can not feel anything but: "relatively comfortable(...) The rotting apple in his back and the inflamed area around it, all covered with soft dust, already hardly troubled him. He thought of his family with tenderness and love.(...) In this state of vacant and peaceful meditation he remained until the tower clock struck three in the morning."
Gregor Samsa bore Adam's sin for the last thing he could feel was the apple on it's back and his death was nothing more than the sacrifice Jesus took upon himself to save the rest of us, in this case his own family.
This is a brilliant story with a very predictable outcome but the fascinating part is how feelings change hour by hour and day by day towards ones closest person.

[Fran]

Duplication