The Metamorphosis

In 1915 Franz Kafka wrote a deceptively simple tale called The Metamorphosis. Many are familiar with the set-up: a traveling salesman named Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to find himself turned into a bug. How and why this happens is never explained. In fact, Kafka treats this like a very bad day instead of a remarkable scientific occurrence: "...but it was much more the complete hopelessness and the thought that they had a experienced a stroke of bad luck unlike any known in their entire circle of family and friends."

When Gregor's parents discover his transformation, they are horrified, mostly because he was the sole breadwinner. Gregor's first worry is that he is going to miss work, and instead of seeking some kind of remedy, such as a doctor, he simply wills it to go away. His sister, Grete, is kind to him at first, feeding him (by trial and error they discover that Gregor prefers rotting food to fresh). But he is unable to communicate with them, and thus is completely isolated, staying in his room, struggling to move around (his first task is to roll off his domed-shaped back to stand upright).

As the weeks go by, his family begins to flourish without him. His father, long retired, gets a job. His mother takes in sewing. Grete gets a job in a shop. They take in three boarders, all men with long white beards, which suggests a Biblical theme. Gregor is allowed to watch his family from his room, where they are bathed with light at the dinner table. Ultimately he dies, and is carried out into the trash by a servant, assumed to be forgotten.

This is admittedly a bleak worldview. Kafka, who was no barrel of laughs, having suffered from tuberculosis and under the heel of a domineering father, suggests that existence is meaningless. No matter what we do it has no effect. It would seem to be counter to the Capra-esque view in It's a Wonderful Life. Repeatedly in The Metamorphoses it is shown how Gregor has been divorced from humanity--he is now an animal, and not only an animal, an invertebrate, without a backbone.

The translation I read is by M.A. Roberts, and it adheres more closely to the intent of Kafka's German text. For instance, the opening sentence is commonly known as "Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find himself in bed, transformed into a giant cockroach." Roberts translates it as "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning out of restless dreams, he found himself in bed, transformed into a gargantuan pest." This is because the German word Kafka uses, Ungeziefer, is more accurately translated as "pest" or "vermin." The German word for insect or roach: "Insekt" or "Kakerlaker," is not used. Later, a maid calls him a dung beetle, but she is not speaking from any scientific vantage point.

Those who have seen The Producers will recall that Zero Mostel, while searching for the world's worst play, stumbles upon one that opens with the customary first sentence. He tosses it aside and says, "It's too good."