EPEOLATRY

BOOK 5

The Metamorphosis (1915)

by Franz Kafka

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.”

Great Philosophy writers of 20th century - Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were influenced by this book and other Kafkaesque works. They studied these as textbooks.

The Metamorphosis is not only a 'sad and devastating portrait of the modern family' but it's a metaphor to human society. It describes the human instincts on filthy insects, on things or entities they find useless. It is an Existential tale of human struggle in Modern Times.

Gregor Samsa was quite a hard-worker to earn for his family till his metamorphosis and was the sole bread-winner and debt-payer but as he gets transformed to filthy creature(though is humane in his soul and mind), the family changes their attitude towards him. He is then confined with alienation, physical and mental abuse by his father and sister.

It makes us think more deeply about our own identity, about the fluidity of what we take to be stable and fixed, and about the perils and miracles of our own metamorphoses. Kafka shows us that how the values of conventional society are warped due to our inability to look beyond the surface to the human being inside.

This short story describes the humanity of a man turned vermin and the monstrousness of his loved ones in his physical transformation.

Franz Kafka has been my all time favorite on philosophy + classics