Metamorphosis

Kafka engages with multiple levels of the consequences of Gregor’s ‘metamorphosis’: its impact on Gregor, its impact on his family, and the practical implication of Gregor’s loss of his human form. Indeed, the Kafkaesque nature of the opening and of Gregor’s exploration of his new form, such as the simile ‘He moved very gradually as if there had been some secret prohibition on leaving the room’, which foregrounds the text’s interest in the realistic negotiation of his new reality through the descriptive and figurative detailing of Gregor’s movements. While Gregor himself has been transformed, his mother, father, and sister - Grete - are forced to fend for themselves in the face of the economic loss posed by Gregor’s change. Gregor himself observes the physical manifestations of that change through the juxtaposed sounds, noting ‘They no longer held the lively conversations of earlier times …. All of them were usually very quiet nowadays,’ illuminating the toll of the physical and familial consequences. Despite providing support to Gregor, Grete’s perspective on the situation shifts, culminating in her shouting that ‘ “It’s got to go … You’ve got to get rid of the idea that that’s Gregor”,’ crystallising her transformation through her exclamatory declaration and emphasising Kafka’s creation of a harsh, absurdist lens.

Underpinning Kafka’s text is absurdism; a world without order or meaning, where chaos occurs and there is no moral system in place to make sense of it. In this world, concepts such as love and hope do not exist, because there is nothing to love, and there is nothing to hope for: the world simply goes on unpredictably, and humans are subject to its whims.