The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Goodreads Synopsis: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. 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."


With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -- though absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."

My Rating: 2 stars.

Content Warnings: PG. Very mild occasional swearing, mild violence, some potential for depression triggering content.

(spoilers below)

Thoughts: This is a novella that I've heard a lot about, and I've wanted to read it for a long time. College classwork just made that happen now.

My first thought after finishing was "what the hell was that?" But that was my fault. From all that I had heard about Metamorphosis before reading it, I was expecting a much different kind of story, with very different themes than what it turned out being. I honestly would have done well to read a synopsis of it before jumping into it, just so I could realize what I was getting into wasn't what I had been led to believe it would be.

I did relate to Gregor, especially once I realized what the point sorta was. Even without that perspective, by the end I was noticing how much I could sympathize with things Gregor was feeling. So it had that going for it.

But then, that's not really an idea I feel should be presented the way this one was. In the end it seemed to present Gregor's death as a good thing, and that there was no hope for his life but to die. There was nothing redeeming about the end, and had it been done differently it could have been a well written ending in the least. Unfortunately, Gregor's (arguably self inflicted) death solved all the problems for everyone and they were all happy after that. An idea that I loathe.

Beyond that the writing was hard to get through. The style is obviously very old, with minimal paragraph breaks, even for dialogue, long arduous passages of describing every little thing, and a shambling pace that didn't make much sense. I don't mind books with slow narratives. But I don't like slogs, and Metamorphosis certainly was one.

All in all it was an interesting idea, but poorly executed, and with an ending that reinforced why the story was bad, rather than redeeming it in any way.