Isolation (by Kyujin)

Gregor Samsa by Richard Johnson, 2013

SPOILER WARNING

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (die Verwandlung in German) is a one-of-a-kind novel about a man named Gregor Samsa who lives with his family in the German Empire (shortly before WWI). He is the main breadwinner of the family, working as a traveling salesman selling fabrics. Gregor does this to pay off his parents’ debt, and not because he enjoys it.

This novel demands much of the reader’s attention, as its sentences are quite long (because it was translated from German). I found it very depressing and grim. You will see why very soon. One morning, Gregor wakes up to find himself in the body of a giant insect. This first scene is rather comedic, as he gradually inches himself out of bed. The story quickly becomes tragicomedy, however, when he can’t show himself, get dressed for work, and communicate with his family. He ends up missing the train twice, while still being stuck in his room. His family members are concerned that he is unwell. Gregor tries to calm them down, but his voice is garbled, further deepening their panic. Out of his paranoia, he locks all doors to his room. This causes even further panic, especially from his sister.

One of his managers from work arrives at the apartment to chastise him and persuade him to leave his room. The manager reams him out for not being what everyone assumed he was: “I’m amazed, amazed. I thought you be a quiet, reasonable person, and now you suddenly seem to want to start strutting about, flaunting strange whims” (11). He accuses Gregor of not plodding along in his expected role. He concludes that Gregor has stopped working and takes this as a moral failure. It seems as though Gregor is about to lose his job because he took an unexplained sick day. This is unacceptable for “the firm” because, as the manager says, “A season for not doing business, there is no such thing, Mr. Samsa, such a thing cannot be tolerated” (11).

When Gregor eventually (painstakingly) unlocks the door, his family and the manager are, of course, horrified at his appearance. His father shoves him back into his room. For many months after that, Gregor is confined to his room. So many pages are dedicated to describing the incredibly awkward arrangement of life between his family and him. His family treats him less and less like Gregor and more like a disgusting and unwanted “guest.”

While the most obvious “metamorphosis” is Gregor’s act of waking up as a giant insect, the main transformation seems to be the shift in family dynamics. Why do I say this? Even as Gregor struggles with his family’s alienation, indifference, and violence, he worries about the strangest things. In fact, he worries most about losing the “quiet life” that his job provided his family: “he felt very proud that he had been able to provide such a life in so nice an apartment for his parents and sister. But what now if all the peace, the comfort, the contentment were to come to a horrible end?” (21). Gregor fears losing this “calm” and “quiet”—which is bought by his hard work at a grueling traveling salesman job that he does not like—and cannot bring himself to think about such loss for too long: “In order not to get involved in such thoughts, Gregor decided to keep moving, and he crawled up and down the room” (21). In other words, Gregor—whether he is a man or an insect—has to “keep moving” in order to not contemplate what it means to, as his manager put it, stop “doing business” (11).

Just like Gregor, his father is always poised to be called up as a cog in the machine of an organization. His father never takes off his official military uniform, even while sleeping in a chair in the apartment, “as if he were always ready for duty and were waiting even here for the voice of his superior” (39). It’s as if he is a “good” participant in a bureaucratic machine because he is always “on call,” even at home, and even if no superior is watching him. The father, unlike Gregor the insect, still serves the larger machine. As his sister, mother, and father grow weary and angry with Gregor’s insect status, and especially as they seek other forms of income (like accepting three terrible boarders in the apartment), the family appears infuriated and defeated by Gregor’s shameful presence. He is occupying a room in the house but he is not contributing to the costs of running a middle-class home. His “movements” produce nothing and because he is no longer able to “do business,” he counts for nothing.

Since Gregor can barely eat the food that his sister slides into his room, and since his father violently lodges an apple that festers over time in Gregor’s side, Gregor wastes away in his filthy room. His sister refuses to acknowledge that her brother Gregor is actually the “monster” (48) and demands that “it has to go” (49). Her accusation is the final straw for Gregor and the family since she blames Gregor for allowing himself to be a curse on the family: “If it were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that it isn’t possible for human beings to live with such a creature, and he would have gone away of his own free will” (49). The sister slams and locks his room door. Gregor “quietly” accepts his sister’s accusation and very accommodatingly passes away:

He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even stronger than his sister’s. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the clock tower struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath (51). If you are not crying at this point, I fear there is something wrong with you. Kafka suggests that the modern human being is most isolated in the very place that one is supposed to be most comfortable, at home with family. This seems to be the result of modern “busy-ness” that turns all of us into moving insects who are always vulnerable to losing security and lacking fulfillment. The story reminds me that anyone who can make a living doing what one loves is incredibly lucky.