Since I relaunched my blog, I haven’t made any posts about books, films, or music. I had planned to do that at some point, but not so soon. Then Franz Kafka visited me and asked me to read his famous novella, The Metamorphosis. I am actually quite surprised that I have only now read it for the first time, in my fifties. I first came across it in high school, but I did not read it then, even though I was a bookworm. Well, this time, my son asked me if we had the book at home, and it was a sign I felt it was time to read it.
The video story (if you prefer to read the story, please continue below the video):
I don’t want to do a review of the work. I am rather going to write about my feelings as I read it. From the first moment, I found it easy to empathize with Gregor Samsa, the novella’s central character, who wakes up one morning transformed into a giant beetle. Many of his thoughts and fears are very familiar to me. For example, he feels responsible for the well-being of his family, father, mother, and younger sister. Gregor was, in fact, a relatively successful traveling salesman. But instead of giving forward, that is, taking care of his future, his concern went to the past to take care of his parents. The downward spiral began as he lost his job due to his transformation into a beetle. Overnight, Gregor went from being the family’s caretaker to a burden and disgrace, which eventually led to his pretty much voluntary death.
The transformation into a beetle is a metaphor for a child from a dysfunctional family whose parents are incapable of giving unconditional love but whose child has to earn their love and support. By succeeding at school and later in their career, by being obedient, in short, by meeting their expectations as much as possible. To be a source of pride, not shame. Are you familiar with such feelings? I am as a son, certainly, but also as a father. But I am trying to transcend this attitude and offer my children unconditional love. Always be there for them when they need me, no matter what.
I wonder how I would have felt reading The Metamorphosis if I had read it at a younger age. I would probably have taken it literally as a kind of science fiction or absurd story. I would certainly have liked it, if only for the style. I would probably have seen the family relationships and the family’s reaction to Gregor’s transformation as quite normal and expected. I’m not sure I even knew the term dysfunctional family four decades ago, let alone recognized dysfunctional relationships, especially within perfect families.
Today, of course, it is different. In the last few decades, dealing with family relationships and upbringing has progressed from an instinctive transmission of “like father like son” from one generation to the next, to a science. Younger generations are increasingly aware that the parental relationship needs to be built up and that copy-pasting the relationship from one’s primary family is a setback.
When I read The Metamorphosis this time, I experienced it very differently. I did not experience Gregor’s transformation into a beetle as the cause of everything that followed but as the consequence of dysfunctional relationships in a family in which Gregor’s value depended on his care for it. It was only a matter of time before an unfortunate event would leave Gregor unable to care for his family and leave the family relations down the drain. If he had not turned into a bug, he might have fallen seriously ill, found a girlfriend or boyfriend, and moved away.
I have always liked novels with gloomy or absurd content. For example, Catch 22, The Master and Margarita, or Heart of a Dog. But these days, I wonder whether I should read them again because after reading The Metamorphosis, I feel that I would read them with my eyes and, above all, my heart wide open.
Attribution:
- Die Verwandlung cover page taken from Wikipedia, the file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
- Beetle head photo by Egor Kamelev
- Good grades students by Freepik – <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/excellent-student-with-good-grade-test-asian-student-uniform_20075952.htm”>Image by felicities</a> on Freepik
