THE METAMORPHOSIS

Imagine you wake up only to find that you have transformed into an insect……

“AS GREGOR SAMSA AWOKE from unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

Just that phrase was enough to buy my curiosity and I just could not resist to know how such a story turns out. The book equally contains other stories but I will focus on the metamorphosis.( spoilers ahead)

Gregor a salesman wakes up one day only to find that he has been transformed into an insect and has difficulties to even get out of bed. The first thing that captured my attention is this man despite his state the chief of his worries is that he has missed his train to work (to a job he clearly hates but he is obligated to keep to due to the financial position of his family) and how how is boss will react to his absence at work, his mind is already racing about how he’ll make amends as the family relies on him for their finances. It is if as he was so much concerned about his duties than his own welfare and it reminded me of a certain story in an animation about a god who was so busy helping others that he did not have time to look at himself until one person gave him a hat as gift of gratitude and when he stood before the mirror he found that he had transformed into a monster.

Due to his situation Gregor couldn’t go to work let alone let the office clerk his boss sent to his house see him and to his detriment the clerk actually do see him and that means he obviously can’t keep his job. Long story short his family keeps him hidden for sometime and he equally has to learn how live in this shape and adapt to his new needs. The sister is a little bit kind to him in the beginning but as times goes it like she just gets tired and cares less. The family tries to adapt to it’s financial situation(the father gets a job as a steward) and before Gregor knows it they are moving furniture out of his room to make his life more comfortable as an insect and during this exercise he comes face to face with his mother since the metamorphosis and the mother just has an asthmatic attack.One day he tries to join the family at the table but the father somehow thinks it’s a threat and chases him back to his room throwing a volleys of apples at him.

With time he just loses the will to live, stops eating and then he dies the family buries him and in spite of everything it comes as a relief, the family takes a walk by they countryside and have the time to appreciate how their daughter has grown during the same period and they think it was high time they found her a good husband. The end. Nothing fancy just a blunt ending like that,nothing like Gregor going on a spiritual journey to seek redemption or how the family will suffer for their acts, nothing!

First of all the writing style is peculiar right our there is a bit of resemblance with the work of Albert Camus in the plague and only now did I discover that this sort of ideology is called existentialism.

My quick take aways

1.The unpredictability of life.

Gregor Samsa just work up only to find that he had been transformed into an insect, there is no external force or something related to some sin(any wrong doing to God/gods/society) that he had committed that led to this change it just fell on him and he had little power over it because it controlled him and led to his death eventually. And analysing the story with more depth Gregor was good person because he helped his family during the time of crisis. In the world they are people suffering for things they literally do not have control over, some have hereditary diseases which will kill them one day or later, others were born on the wrong side of the wall and they have been considered enemies throughout their lives, others are victims of natural disasters, some were abused as children and other human inflicted horrors. It is difficult to justify why it happened to then and drawing from that is nothing but easy.

2.Limits

Although we fail to accept there is always a limit to everything in this life and everything is more or less dependent on the circumstances that keep our social interactions intact. Once you break those norms consciously or unconsciously you’ll always pay the price despite the claims about love you were showered with when everything was going according to plan.For example you get hit by a car and you loose your mental faculties in the aftermath. Despite it not being your fault your family will put you away if you start becoming a threat to their lives and funny enough it makes sense.

We can fight for a while but there comes a time where everyone will just breakdown and of course that is quite subjective but it eventually comes down to that.The sister tried hard to help Gregor but at some point she was just so tired which also shows that there is a limit for human love no matter what form it might take.

3. What make you YOU?

Sometimes there is little regard to the very thing that make us human and enable us to make successful human interactions. And we see that by just taking into consideration how much your life would change if you lost your sight.

4.Search for Meaning

Somehow I was thinking something striking will happen but the story ends bluntly very and I almost became as defensive as Ivan(Brothers Kamazarov). We search for a grand narrative all the time and to me it just shows how it is a big struggle for people who live with the idea of life not having any means. It was also a reason not to dramatise everything and that sometimes events are just events they come and go and people eventually get on with their lives.

The rest of the stories share the same sentiments and some are very funny to some extent. All in all it is a masterpiece and I enjoyed reading it

Happy Women’s day

@Chungamu