What could lead you to reading a particular book?

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Few days back, I was watching a Netflix series called “Sex Education”

Maeve Wiley, the Smart and Sexy Lead Character in the series, in a scene says to Headmaster Groff “I can debate the inherent differences between Existentialism and Transcendentalism”.

Later that day when I was reading a Tamil non-fiction called “Vedikkai Paarppavan” written by poet Na. Muthukumar, he quoted Kafka.

I suddenly remembered that some book written by Kafka already lies around in my sister’s bookshelf. I immediately reached out to the shelf and found Metamorphosis written by Franz Kafka is exactly the book quoted by Na. Muthukumar.

The back cover of the book read “The Metamorphosis is a book that concerns itself with the themes of alienation, disillusionment, and existentialism”.

The term existentialism tortured me in too many forms on a single day that I badly wanted to start knowing about what it really is. Reading wiki pages on the term certainly didn’t help.

So The Metamorphosis instantly became my next pick!

Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of the story finds himself transformed to a horrible-looking vermin one fine morning, after a disturbed dream. He finds his body to be weird, even finds himself unable to control and command how his legs function. Gradually he gets used to his body and finds ease to move around normally.

Though being a insect, he lets his thoughts wave around still as an active and responsible person of his family but in accordance to his new biological situation… He thinks about how to catch the next train, how not to abandon his family financially, how to execute his plans to send his sister to music conservatory and so on.

There are few bits of his feelings that felt so realistic to me:

1. When his employer sent their Head Clerk to check on Gregor why he hadn’t appeared at office even after the clock struck quarter past 7 in the morning, he, in his insect-ish body manages to unlock his room and comes out to explain the situation like this: “It is quite possible for someone to be temporarily unable to work, but that’s just the right time to remember what’s been achieved in the past and consider that later on, once the difficulty has been removed, he will certainly work with all the more diligence and concentration.”
2. In continuation to the above dialogue, he also mentions about the office gossip about people who work away from office: “I know that nobody likes travellers. They think we earn an enormous wage as well as having a soft time of it. That’s just prejudice but they have no particular reason to think better of it. And you’re also well aware that we travellers spend almost the whole year away from the office, so that we can easily fall victim to gossip and chance and groundless complaints, and it’s almost impossible to defend yourself from that sort of thing, we usually hear about them, or if at all it’s when we arrive back home exhausted from a trip, and that’s when we feel the harmful effects of what’s been going on without even knowing what caused them.”
3. Then Gregor talks about how hard he worked to overcome the financial shortcomings of the family after his father’s business collapsed. He talks about his first salary for which the family got delighted. The author narrates the situation like this: “They had been good times and they had never come again, at least not with the same splendour, even though Gregor had later earned so much that he was in a position to bear the costs of the whole family, and did bear them. They had even got used to it, both Gregor and the family, they took the money with gratitude, and he was glad to provide it, although there was no longer much warm affection given in return.”

These are pure thoughts of a sole breadwinner of any family.

At one point in time when he feels his room is too congested to crawl around freely. And his sister who always had understood his feeling even after his metamorphosis, tries to remove the furniture in his room. His mom questions his sister if that wouldn’t give Gregor an impression that they lost hope that he could get back to his normal life. Moreover, if the furniture was left as it is, it would be easier for him to cope up with his life by forgetting the bitter past, if at all he gets to become a normal human being again. In the spark of that moment listening to his mom’s words, he also thought why he let the furniture to be removed from his room — if it’s because he thought he wanted a cave-like setup in his room. Finally, he gets convinced that if the furniture hinders him to crawl around mindlessly of his new life then it is not hindrance but advantage to shake him out of his carefree thoughts. This scene clearly shows how Gregor was starting to settle down with his new absurd life yet trying to get back to normal.

Throughout the story, the villain was, the misinterpretation of Gregor’s intentions by his family members. It was so painful to put myself in Gregor’s shoes while I read the story.

At last, family gives up about considering him still as one of their family members and wants to get rid of him. Eventually Gregor starves to death, but his family celebrates his death and moves on with their lives.

After all, Gregor did acknowledge the absurdity in his new life right when he understood that his words doesn’t make sense to his family and the intentions behind his actions are clearly misunderstood. Yet, he did not give up every single option he had to make them understand his good intentions.

After reading all these, I think, this, in essence is what existentialism means:

1. It is indeed an unjust and irrational universe that we are living in; and our lives are definitely absurd.
2. Despite the above fact, every single person acts as a responsible individual to choose and own their actions for the betterment of their lives.

Now if you ask me if I have completely understood what existentialism means, it’s a confident NO! Yet, this book is indeed a good place to begin to understand the philosophy.

To conclude, I’m pretty sure The Metamorphosis is definitely one of the books that would give you different perspectives about life when you read and re-read it at different phases of your life.