The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Book – The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Genre – Short story, Novella, Fantasy Fiction, Absurdist fiction
Publish – First Published in 1915
No. of pages – 100
About the Book
‘One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.’
One of the seminal works of fiction of the twentieth century. A story of Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, who wakes up one day to discover that he has metamorphosed into a bug. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a book that concerns itself with the themes of alienation, disillusionment and existentialism.
As Samsa struggles to reconcile his humanity with his transformation, Kafka, weaves his readers into a web that deals with the absurdity of existence, the alienating experience of modern life and the cruelty and incomprehensibility of authoritarian power.
Book Review
When I first read this book (April 2020), my exact words were “The book didn’t work for me for the lack of character detailing and how a particular topic is being stretched with no ends.” And now (Nov 2024) when I re-read it, I couldn’t be more wrong. There is as much character detailing as much one can read and understand. The topic is not stretched but emphasized on how certain circumstances can be the death of you.
The insect Gregor Samsa has metamorphosed into represents so many things at different levels – being disabled of free speech, of identity, of simple pleasure of being, or maybe, being actually physically disabled.
Themes of family support, the dying need of father’s approval, the efforts one takes to explain themselves to be understood, the vicious corporate environment, problematic neighbors, a dream to be able to fulfill someone else’s dream and the feeling of helplessness – is all in this 100 page novella.
As we mark the 100th death anniversary of Kafka, we as an individual and as a society are still struggling finding a place in this world, trying to fit in into images people have of us in their mind, wearing masks they want to see us in. Trying to find meaning in the randomness of events.
The sad part is, 15-16 year old teenagers are able to relate to Kafka’s thoughts, his writings and his cries for help. This shouldn’t be the case. But as the world progresses to new ideas of being, the human-being find themselves lost in this progression.
It breaks my heart that Kafka had to write this novel.
Do I Recommend this Book?
Read it. But before you read, maybe read a little about Franz Kafka. This will help understand this book better.
And ask yourself one question – are you being what others want you to be, or are you being yourself. And if you are being yourself, are people around you accepting you at your face value?
About the author
An icon of twentieth-century literature, Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, into a middle-class, German family in Prague. Never famous in his own lifetime, most of Kafka’s works were published and translated only during the 1920s and 1930s and almost instantly, they became cult texts of modern literature. The Judgment, The Metamorphosis and Amerika were all written in 1912 while The Trial, Kafka’s most famous novel, was written in 1914. Kafka died of tuberculosis in 1924.
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I want to read this book but the mixed reviews have deterred me so far.