Wikipedia

The Metamorphosis

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Omicronpersei8 (talk | contribs) at 06:16, 26 August 2006 (Reverted edits by 71.34.38.26 (talk) to version 71799047 by Dina using VS). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Metamorphosis (in German, Die Verwandlung) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915, and arguably the most famous of his works along with the longer works The Trial and The Castle. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a giant "monstrous vermin" (see Lost in translation, below). It is widely regarded as a highly symbolic tale with various interpretations.

File:FKV.jpg
The Metamorphosis - First edition 1915
Illustration: Ottomar Starke

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler The story is sometimes comic — for example, near the start, Gregor's main concern is that, despite what has happened, he must nevertheless get to work on time.

Gregor is unable to speak in his insect form, and never successfully communicates with his family at all after his physical appearance is revealed to them. However, he seems to retain his cognitive faculties, which is unknown to his family.

Curiously, his condition does not arouse a sense of surprise or incredulity in the eyes of his family, who merely despise it as an indication of impending burden. However, most of the story revolves around his interactions with his family, with whom he lives, and their shock, denial, and repulsion whenever he reveals his physical condition. Horrified by his appearance, they take to shutting Gregor into his room, but do try to care for him by providing him food and water. The sister takes charge of caring for Gregor, initially working hard to make him comfortable. Nevertheless, they seem to want as little to do with him as possible. The sister and mother shrink back whenever he reveals himself, and Gregor's father pelts him with apples when he emerges from his room one day. One of the apples becomes embedded in his back, causing an infection.

Time passes as, confined to his room, Gregor's only activities are looking out of his window, and crawling up the walls and over the ceiling. Financial hardship befalls the family, and the sister's caretaking deteriorates. Devoid of human contact, one day Gregor emerges to the sound of his sister's violin in the hopes to get his much-loved sister to join him in his room and play her violin for him. But her rejection of him is total, when she says to the family:

We must try to get rid of it. We've done everything humanly possible to take care of it and to put up with it, no one can blame us in the least.

The sister then determines with finality that the insect is no longer Gregor, since Gregor would have left them out of love and taken their burden away. Gregor returns to his room, lies down, and dies from starvation, neglect and infection caused by the festering apple his father threw at him months before.

The point of view shifts as, upon discovery of his corpse, the family feel an enormous burden has been lifted from them, and start planning for the future again. Fantastically, the family suddenly discovers that they aren't doing badly at all, both socially and financially, and the brief process of forgetting Gregor and shutting him from their lives is quickly accomplished.

Interpretation

As with all of Kafka's works, The Metamorphosis is open to a wide range of interpretations; in fact, Stanley Corngold's book, The Commentator's Despair, lists over 130 interpretations. Most obvious are themes relating to society's treatment of those who are different. Other themes include the loneliness of being cut off and the desperate and unrealistic hopes that such isolation brings.

Some also feel the book deals with the absurdity of human existence, leading some literary critics to associate it with existentialism or absurdism. It is also possible to apply Freudian and other forms of literary criticism to the novella.

Lost in translation

The opening line of the novella is famous in English:

As Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself in his bed, transformed into a monstrous insect.

The original German line runs like this:

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

English translators have often sought to render the word Ungeziefer as "insect", but this is not strictly accurate, and may be based on an attempt to clarify what Kafka may have intended (according to his journals and letters to the publisher of the text) to be an ambiguous term.[citation needed] In German, Ungeziefer literally means "vermin" and is sometimes used to mean "bug" – a very general term, totally unlike the scientific sounding "insect". Kafka had no intention of labelling Gregor as this or that specific thing, but merely wanted to convey disgust in his transformation. Literally, the end of the line should be translated as ...transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin (this is the phrasing used in the David Wyllie translation [1]), although the feeling of the word in German is more colloquial sounding (like "bug").


However, "a monstrous vermin" sounds unwieldy in English and in Kafka's letter to his publisher of 25th October 1915, in which he discusses his concern about the cover illustration for the first edition, he uses the term "Insekt", saying "The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance". [2] While this shows his concern not to give precise information about the type of creature Gregor becomes, the use of the general term "insect" can therefore be defended on the part of translators wishing to improve the readibility of the end text.

Ungeziefer has sometimes been rendered as "cockroach", "dung beetle", "beetle", and other highly specific terms. The only term in the book is "dung beetle", used by the cleaning lady near the end of the story, but it is not used in the narration. This has become such a common misconception, that English speakers will often summarize Metamorphosis as "...a story about a guy who turns into a cockroach". Despite all this, no such creature appears in the original text.

Vladimir Nabokov, who was an entomologist as well as writer and literary critic, insisted that Gregor was not a cockroach, but a beetle with wings under his shell, and capable of flight - if only he had known it.

Allusions/references from other works

  • Philip Glass composed incidental music for two separate theater productions of the story. These two themes, along with two themes from the Errol Morris film The Thin Blue Line, were incorporated into a five-part piece of music for solo piano entitled Metamorphosis.
  • In Mel Brooks' 1968 movie The Producers, two men working on a fraud scheme are looking for the worst play they can find, and pass up The Metamorphosis (after having read the line about Gregor being a giant insect) as being "too good". This dialogue survives in the 2001 Broadway and 2005 movie adaptations.
  • In another Mel Brooks movie, Spaceballs, Dark Helmet passes a reference to Kafka when their spaceship is transforming into a gigantic maid.
  • The dialogue driven cartoon Home Movies did a tribute to "The Metamorphosis" in "Director's Cut", an episode in the first season of the show. The characters performed a rock opera style retelling of the short story.
  • In The Venture Bros. episode "Mid-Life Chrysalis", Dr. Venture's transformation into a caterpillar slightly mirrors that of Gregor Samsa's transformation. Quote: "Gentlemen, what you are about to see is a nightmare inexplicably torn from the pages of Kafka!"
  • Notorious American cartoonist Robert Crumb drew an illustrated adaptation of the novella.
  • In the comic book Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez, the epinomous Johnny is plagued by a roach that keeps appearing in his house no matter how many times he kills it (whether or not this roach is immortal or simply many different roaches is up to interpretation) and is affectionately named "Mr. Samsa".
  • In The Simpsons book Treehouse of Horror Spook-tacular, Matt Groening did a spoof on the metamorphosis, entitling it Metamorphosimpsons. In addition, in one of the episodes, Lisa attends a place called "Cafe Kafka", which is shown to be a popular place for college students, and features several posters of cockroaches in Bohemian-like poses.
  • In the Konami Playstation 2 game Shadow Hearts 2, the player faces bug-like creatures called "Gregor" as random battles in the sewer level.
  • In the popular comic Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes claims that if he does not receive a good night kiss, he will have Kafka dreams.
  • In the popular comic FoxTrot, Jason sleeps with the hopes of waking up as a beetle but instead wakes up as a younger clone of his sister.
  • In the television series Smallville, Chloe speculates that a character who seems to be transforming into an insect is "going Kafka".
  • In the play The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute, Adam says to Evelyn in the final scene "I got a little Gregor Samsa thing going on right now..." after Evelyn reveals his "metamorphosys" to his peers.
  • In Kurt Vonnegut's collection of short essays "A Man Without a Country," he mentions "The Metamorphosis" in a discussion of plot as an example of a book where the main character starts out in a bad situation and it only gets worse from there (to infinity, in fact).
  • In Rudy Rucker's novel White Light, the main character enters a world where he meets a giant talking roach-like creature named "Franx".
  • In one episode of the Nickelodeon cartoon series The Angry Beavers, the beavers fend off a giant beetle by donning heavy boots and brandishing large newspapers, much like Samsa's father.
  • Catalan writer Quim Monzo's rather twisted short story Gregor tells about a bug which turns into a human, in an attempt to ironically deconstruct The Metamorphosis.
  • German Gothic artist Alexander Kaschte named his main band project Samsas Traum (Samsa's Dream).
  • Gregor Samsa is the name of an American post-rock band.
  • In the filk band Ookla the Mok's song "Stranger in the Mirror," the narrator says he once "awoke from unsettling dreams transformed in [his] bed into a monstrous vermin." [4]
 
English Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Metamorphosis&oldid=71957917"